


Adept

by HailMary



Series: The Small Prayer Series [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Infidelity, M/M, Rape, Torture, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:02:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HailMary/pseuds/HailMary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is soldier and a doctor, but he is also an Adept; since he hit puberty, John has been able to touch and channel the all-encompassing energy field known as the Aura. Now his talent is needed more than ever. Great Britain and her Colonies are at war with Moriarty's Empire, and Moriarty has vowed to continue until he's Collared every living Adept. When John meets a man named Sherlock Holmes during a teaching rotation at St. Barts medical Praxeum, things get a whole lot harder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John Watson’s knees cracked as he dropped down beside another wounded soldier. He felt rather than heard his tendons snap; it was impossible to hear anything over the sublimating agony of a hundred wounded soldiers. Their terror was a physical thing, hissing up from their bodies like steam, turning the air above Echo Beach into an opaque and smothering fog.

Ignoring the smell of blood, burning metal, and primal fear, John breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. The breathing exercises were second nature now. He’d used them since he was teenager to attain the focus necessary to touch the Aura, to channel the energy he found there, to heal and cleanse. He grasped a tendril of that power now, pulling it into him and through him and directing it into the body of the boy in front of him.

Or, he should say, the soldier in front of him. His patient couldn’t be a day over eighteen. What did that actually mean though? No one here could still be called a child.

John laid his hands on the soldier’s torso, framing the hole torn by the bullet. He saturated the area with his power as he looked for the culprit, the source of the blood filling up the soldier’s abdomen, the blood spilling onto the sand. When he found it seconds later, he didn’t bother biting back a curse. The bullet had blasted away half the left kidney. The bloody, goddamn, fucking kidney. He’d hoped for some ruptured blood vessels, a sliced artery, something he could tie off with a twist of power. He wasn’t strong enough to handle something this big.

For the millionth time since sunrise, John railed silently against his own weakness. He’d known Adepts at the Barts Praxeum who could heal this in a second. Who could knit bone and rebuild organs and haul people back from the brink. John could barely channel enough Aura to be considered Adept at all. His training as a doctor allowed him to use what little power he had to great advantage, but at times like this, his best wasn’t enough.

The boy was going to die.

There was no way to fix him here, and there was no way he could last however long it would be before he was loaded onto one of the evacuation boats. Bloody hell.

John rocked back on his knees. He wanted to press the heels of his hands into his eyes until he couldn’t see the haze hanging over the beach, until he could only see white light. But he couldn’t. His hands were covered in blood. He settled for brushing the boy’s sweaty hair off his forehead. At least John could make sure he passed in peace.

“What’s you name, soldier?” John had to shout to make his voice carry over the din. Even then, it took three goes before the boy turned toward him, eyes glassy and distant.

“It hurts.” The kid’s voice was weak, little more than a pained wheeze. John had to lean in close to hear.

“I know it does. And I’ll help you. But first I need to know your name.”

The kid shuddered in pain before he spoke again. “Childers, sir.”

“Nice to meet you, Childers, I’m Watson. Here’s how this is going to go.” John tried to make his voice as authoritative as possible. He wanted Childers to believe him. “We have a lot of people in Calais that need to be evacuated and it’s going to take some time. But the injured have priority. For now, I’ll patch you up and do something for the pain.”

Childers didn’t respond. Taking the boy's silence as consent, John redirected his power from Childers’ kidney up to his neck. John seized onto the bundle of nerves there, the ones responsible for relaying pain to the brain, and pinched. Childers relaxed immediately. His eyes closed.

Once the bandage was secure, John stroked the boy’s forehead one last time. Then he moved on to the next soldier.

This French campaign had been an unmitigated disaster from the start. John understood the necessity of it, of course. Moriarty’s Empire had been threatening France’s eastern border since Germany fell last year. When the Empire had finally moved on France, Britain had been treaty bound to enter the fray. Really, it wasn’t as if Britain wouldn’t have helped France anyway, even without a treaty. An occupied France would mean a constant, solid threat along Britain’s southern coast. As if that weren’t reason enough, if Moriarty got his hands on France, he would be in prime position to take control of France’s Louisiana territory in North America. That would put Britain’s American Colonies at risk, something King William had deemed unacceptable. The Colonies provided more than half of Britain’s raw materials, after all. Not to mention a goodly portion of the motherland’s Adepts.

But the Empire that arrived in France was stronger than anyone reckoned. There had obviously been more Adepts in Germany than their government had let on, the cagey bastards, and Moriarty Collared all of them. With their new, unforeseen power, the Empire had hit France like a hurricane, completely overwhelming and then utterly annihilating France and Britain’s defenses in less than a month. Britain’s forces had been pushed back to Calais where the majority had already been transported back to England. In a matter of hours, the British military would be gone and France would be on its own.

On the heels of that thought, John took a moment to thank God, thank the Aura, thank his lucky stars that he was English. Adepts were treated with respect in Britain and the Colonies. After puberty, those sensitive to the Aura could enter any Praxeum they chose. John had taken his meager talent to Barts, the London medical Praxeum, and then entered the military. He’d always had a thorough understanding of duty. King and country and all that. And, over the past year, many of his fellow British Adepts had joined up alongside him. Nothing motivates like an overabundance of skin in the game.

Icy fingers clawed their way up John’s spine. He honestly couldn’t think of anything worse than the Collar. To have no control over your power, your actions…to be at the mercy of Moriarty. John tasted acid. He’d heard Moriarty’s party line before; that the Adepts had too much power, that they operated shadow governments in areas without Collar Laws. That Adepts were dangerous and needed to be controlled for the good of society. Moriarty held up his own Empire’s relative stability as proof of that.

But John had seen Moriarty’s reptilian eyes glitter darkly on the telly. He’d heard Moriarty’s manic voice pulse with venom and bitter hatred. He’d watched Moriarty caress his Ring, the one linked with his own detail of Collared, as gently as John would a lover. John saw and he heard and he knew in his marrow that for Moriarty, this was a vendetta.

That was fine. It was all fine. Because that meant John knew who he had to thank for this god-awful mess.

John continued to triage the wounded as a round of transports roared off toward England. Long shadows stretched behind the few thousand people who remained, laying a quilted patchwork of light and dark over the blood stained sand. A woman in dirt-crusted combat gear strode up to him, her legs kicking the shadows as she moved. She arrived just as the next wave of transports motored into the shallows. John finished with the shrapnel wound he’d been tending and stood to face her.

She saluted. “Captain John Watson?”

“Yes, Private?”

“Major Perkins needs you straight away, sir.”

John frowned. Something was off. “Fine. I’ll just check on a few…”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I was told to escort you down to the transport line myself. Right now. Absolutely no delays.” She looked deadly serious.

John sighed. He felt exhausted. “Ok, fine. Lead the way.”

Down by the water, the air was lighter. Major Perkins straddled the foamy seam between sea and sand. Perkins was as average looking as John was himself – the Major’s muddy brown eyes and thin, chapped lips almost disappeared into a round, creased face made ruddy by wind and sun. He was surrounded by at least fifteen Adepts, easily identified by the circular Aura patches on their left shoulders. Most were medical Adepts, like John, who’d stayed behind to look after the wounded, although there were a few projectionists in the crowd. At this point, the group, plus John, probably represented all the British Adepts left in France. John felt a whorl of unease in his gut. For all of them to be gathered like this, it couldn’t be good.

Major Perkins cleared his throat loudly. “New orders! All Adepts still left in France are to evacuate on this round of transport. That means you lot. Make sure you spread yourselves out, no more than two Adepts per transport. As soon as you’re in, pull up the gate behind you. The operators have orders to leave as soon as you’re secure.”

A beat of silence followed Perkins’ announcement. Then, cacophony.

“What’s this about, sir?”

“But the injured…”

“The transports aren’t even full yet!”

John didn’t speak. He just stood, feet shoulder width apart, shoulders squared, gaze steady and impassive. But he burned with the same questions as the other Adepts, and the same fear. The only logical explanation for an order like this was that Moriarty’s forces had moved more quickly than anticipated. Again. And those forces were close enough to disrupt the tail end of the retreat. God, if there wasn’t even enough time to finish filling the transports, the Empire couldn’t be far from Echo Beach. They must have had a hundred collared projectionists working overtime to get an army this close unnoticed. How did Moriarty’s troops find them so fast?

As if on cue, a massive explosion blew the top off one of the bluffs overlooking the beach. Able-bodied soldiers ducked for cover behind the morning’s hastily made barricades, training their rifles at the bluffs. Others began dragging the injured toward the transports. Another explosion followed on the heels of first, and another after that, and another. Each one was closer than the one before.

Perkins called for the Adepts attention over the barrage. “Britain can’t afford to have more assets collared! Get into a transport. NOW!”

John’s insides flashed hot, then utterly cold. Oh, God. All the soldiers on the beach. Childers. No time. They were out of time.

But John understood duty. He could not, would not, be taken. He sprinted toward the fourth transport in the line, another Adept close on his heels. The ground was shaking. He thought he tasted sulfur, but maybe he was imagining it. Adrenaline chased itself through his circulatory system, speeding up his heart, bypassing his pain receptors. John reached out to the Aura and directed its power into the muscles of his legs, increasing blood flow and oxygen levels while clearing away rapidly accumulating lactic acid.

Frigid water lapped up his boots before wet sand gave way to the metal ramp of the evacuation boat. He charged up the ramp and into the transport, explosions tearing into the people on the beach. The reinforced steel ramp clanged shut just as the first enemy soldiers crested the top of the bluffs. Bullets began to ping off the door in earnest, chasing the transport into the Channel.

John pressed his back against the wall of the transport and sank down to the floor. He could no longer see what was happening on the beach, but God help him, he could hear. Shame and relief blew through him in equal measure when the vibration of the engines finally overcame the screams of his dying countrymen.

He looked around the transport as the noise died away. It was carrying about fifteen people, including the soldier who’d escorted him to Major Perkins and the other Adept. That was less than half of what the transport could actually hold.

John closed his eyes against all the empty space. He felt guilty. Of course he felt guilty. It was normal to feel guilty in this situation. Even if Britain didn’t have any Adepts to spare, and Moriarty certainly couldn’t be allowed to capture more, he’d still been saved while others had died. He should feel guilt over that.

John breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, calming his mind, centering himself. But as John used his power to soothe his racing heart, to dispel the adrenaline that lingered in his blood, he was forced to acknowledge a deeper truth, the truth buried beneath, fueling weaponized guilt.

That had been a lot of fun.


	2. Chapter 2

Elbows down, John held his vigorously scrubbed hands away from his body and pointed them straight at the sky. Or, rather, straight at the paneled ceiling. Carefully maneuvering his arms, he shrugged into the sterile gown the scrub nurse held up, then plunged his hands into latex surgical gloves. He’d done this a hundred times. Nothing unusual here.  
  
The nurse did up the ties on his scrubs and John strode over to his patient. The man on the operating table was in bad shape. His dark hair contrasted obscenely with his sickly white skin – skin made unnaturally pale by massive blood loss – and a ventilator forced air in and out of his lungs. He was someone important though, or someone connected. At least, there were very few people who merited a full-service med chopper from Britain’s southern operating base to the best medical Praxeum in the country.  
  
Unfortunately for the man, all of Barts’ strongest Adepts had been deployed to the Colonies. In the months since Britain abandoned France, Moriarty had opened up a new front in North America and every available Adept was needed to fend him off. Really, Mr. Translucent should be grateful there was still a qualified medical Adept left at Barts to perform his surgery, even one as weak as John. He was only there because the military had assigned him a six-month stint at the Praxeum to teach an accelerated combat medicine course for newly enlisted Adepts. After the six months were up, he would ship out with the young cohort. He couldn’t wait.  
  
“Excuse me, Lorraine? Do we have a name?” John always found it easier to do his best work when he knew the patient’s name. Perhaps the personal connection reinforced a psychic connection, which in turn facilitated the transfer of Aura. Or perhaps it was complete bollocks. Something to look into, anyway.  
  
Lorraine  glanced briefly at the man’s chart before answering. “Oh, well...there’s no name here. He’s only listed as a ‘special operations consultant,’ whatever that means. The guys who brought him in said he just showed up at Eastbourne, shot to shit. They don’t have the facilities there to deal with him long term, so they flew him up to London after they got him stable. Or, relatively stable.”  
  
“Right, thanks.”  
  
John breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. He could feel the Aura all around him. It pulsed with every beat of his heart. Or maybe it was the other way round. No one knew for sure, but he enjoyed it all the same. And, now that he thought about it, taking time to enjoy the little things was one advantage the home front had over the frontlines. Not that he was keeping a tally or anything.  
  
He grabbed a thread of power and a scalpel, moving both of them to the gunshot wounds in the special operations consultant’s chest. A moment later he smiled, relieved and confident that the Aura was on his side today. The damage was tricky around the collapsed lung, but, barring some unforeseen disaster, the man was going to be fine, the lucky sod. John set his scalpel to flesh and started to work.  
  
Three days later, Lorraine’s voice crackled over John’s walkie while he filled out paperwork in his office: “Doctor Watson, you’re needed at recovery room 432. Your no-name patient is lucid and terrorizing the staff.” There was a short pause. “Um, please hurry.”  
  
Curious, John didn’t hesitate. His shift was almost over anyway. Abandoning the paperwork, he sent his acknowledgement and slipped into the corridor. As he neared the room, one of the older nurses rushed out, nearly bowling him over. John steadied her with a firm hand.  
  
“Hey, Sandy, what’s going on here?”  
  
Sandy ran a hand through her short gray hair. When she answered, her voice shook with rage. “I have never, in my life...and he’s still on pain meds! Good luck, Doctor, you’re going to need it.”  
  
John watched with fascination as Sandy stalked towards the nurses’ station. Who was this man, who could work Sandy into such a tizzy? She had a temper, but this was well beyond riled. Not that John minded. He’d never liked Sandy much. Intensely interested, he squared his shoulders and walked through the doorway.  
  
The cause of the commotion was sitting up in bed. He looked older than he had on the operating table, maybe in his late twenties rather than his early, only a few years younger than John. Now that the man’s eyes were open, John could see they were as pale as his skin, an eerie shade of blue-grey reminiscent of deep Arctic ice. Though they were a bit glazed from the drugs, they held no mercy.  
  
“I need a laptop.”  
  
John blinked. The man’s voice was much deeper than he would have expected, and rather public school. “I don’t think so, Mr., er, Sir. You’re not off oxygen yet. You’re too weak-”  
  
“I need a laptop. That is not a request. It is a matter of national security. If the staff were not completely incompetent idiots, I would not have to waste my time at this miserable mediocrity carnival.”  
  
“Listen, mate-”  
  
Even with the oxygen cannula in his nose, the man embodied dignified disgust. “Doctor Watson. You know I consult for the military. You’re a military man yourself, a medical Adept, though a pitifully weak one. You have a strong sense of duty, of honor, which is part of the reason why you enlisted right after you graduated from this supposedly top-tier medical Praxeum. You were recently a part of the disastrous French campaign. I was in France myself, when I was shot, gathering information of a very sensitive nature.” He gestured sharply at a memory stick that had been brought in with the rest of his belongings, currently resting on the tray across the bed. “I must analyze that data, now. Time is of the essence.”  
  
John knew he was staring. He couldn’t help it. “That was amazing. How did you know that?”  
  
Those razor wire eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in suspicion. “That is beside the point. I need a laptop.”  
  
Reaching out with his mind, John grasped a minute strand of Aura, just to hold it. He looked right into the man’s eyes, steady and calm, and the man stared right back. Long seconds passed. The only sounds were the beeps and whirs of medical machines. The air thickened between them, and John let it, just to see if the man would flinch. He didn’t.  
  
“Fine. You can use mine. I’ll get it from my office.”  
  
With John’s words the tension dissolved. The man opened his mouth as if he’d expected more of a fight, then closed it again. As John turned to leave, the man spoke again. “You thought that was amazing?”  
  
“Yes, of course.”  
  
“That’s not what most people say.”  
  
“What do most people say?”  
  
The man’s mouth twisted into a smug smirk. “Fuck off.”  
  
John snorted, amused. Just as he stepped out of the room, the man spoke again. “Oh, and Doctor Watson.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“The name is Holmes. Sherlock Holmes. But please, call me Sherlock. Unless you prefer Mr. Sir.”  
  
“Sherlock?” Right. Of course the man’s name was Sherlock. “Alright, then I’m John.”  
  
“Then, John. Do hurry, I don’t have all day.”  
  
John hurried. What else was there to do, really? Sure, this man, this Sherlock, could be insane. But if he wasn’t, if he was telling the truth, then lives were at stake. And it made sense to believe him; why else would he be choppered in at the King’s expense? How else would he know those things about John? How could the man’s eyes shine with such intelligence and determination, if he was just delusional? No, John had learned to trust his instincts, to trust the Aura, a long time ago. Now his instincts were telling him to get Sherlock a damn laptop.  
  
He returned minutes later, computer in one hand, charger in the other.  
  
Sherlock sat up a little straighter. He had already lowered the bed tray to rest against his lap. “Excellent, John. Here would be most convenient.” He tapped the tray twice with the tip of his middle finger.  
  
John moved to put the laptop on the tray, then reconsidered, pulling back at the last second. “Before I give this to you, I expect a few things in return. First, no more riling up the staff. Sandy looked about ready to punch a wall, and she’s bad enough as is. Second, as your doctor, I will be the one who decides when you’ve had enough. You were half-dead three days ago. Just because you have an Adept accelerating your healing process does not mean you get to abuse the privilege. Can you agree to that?”  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes, for all the world as if John were the one being difficult. “Yes, yes, whatever you say. Hand it over.”  
  
In the time it took for John to find an unoccupied plug-in, Sherlock had already slotted in the memory stick and brought up whatever data was stored inside.  
  
“Oi! That was password protected!”  
  
Sherlock did not look away from the screen as he answered. “Don’t be stupid. If you didn’t want people deducing your password, you shouldn’t make it so obvious.”  
  
“I can take that away anytime, you know...” John trailed off as he caught sight of the data scrolling up the screen. Names, dates, and locations flashed by, followed by maps of different London neighborhoods. Another page held business invoices, shipping records, and tax information. Most of it was in English, but he saw German, French, and something that looked Eastern European as well. “Hey, should I be seeing this? Am I authorized to see this?”  
  
“I accepted this case as a favor. I was guaranteed complete autonomy and I work as I see fit. You need not worry.”  
  
“Right. Well.” John collapsed into a chair by the bed. He shifted in the seat, uncomfortable. The Praxeum needed to invest in better quality furniture. “I’ll just keep an eye on you then.” His shift was officially over now, and he didn’t start his next for a good eight hours. He should be on his way home now, on his way back to his tiny, grey bedsit to sleep in his tiny, hard bed. What would it hurt though, if he stayed a bit longer. Curiosity wasn’t a sin.  
  
Sherlock didn’t respond.  
  
For the first half hour or so, John simply watched as Sherlock clicked through the data. The pale man’s fingers were long and thin, graceful as they arched over the keyboard. He was muttering under his breath as he typed, a low bass line against staccato bursts of key clicks. As the minutes went by, Sherlock spoke louder and louder, until he was talking normally. Eventually, he addressed John directly.  
  
“John, you’re an average British male. How would you describe your buying habits in the month of December?”  
  
“John, look at this picture. How tall do you think the man was who strangled her?”  
  
“John, you must like inane, boring things. Would you take a date to this park?  
  
Sherlock dismissed each one of John’s answers as soon as he gave them, though it did seem to help the injured man to talk things through. Time flew by. But Sherlock was still recovering. No matter how hard he tried to ignore the needs of his body, and John knew Sherlock was trying very hard, he needed rest. An hour and a half later, after Sherlock had hunched almost half way down the bed, John put an end to it.  
  
He closed the lid of the laptop. “That’s enough for now. You need to sleep.”  
  
Sherlock puffed up like an angry bird. “This is too important to put off. I don’t sleep while I’m working cases. And I’m fine.”  
  
“One, you look ridiculous like that. Second, you agreed. I’m calling it. I’ll bring the laptop back in the morning, after we both get some sleep.”  
  
“I look ridiculous?” Sherlock’s voice was indignant. “Says the man who used a cardinal number and an ordinal number as sequential indicators in the same list!”  
  
“God, I can’t believe I only met you - well, the conscious you - two hours ago. It feels like ages.”  
  
“John -”  
  
“I’ll see you in six hours. Goodnight, Sherlock.” Laptop in hand, John left.  
  
For the next week, John spent the lion’s share of his off time in recovery room 432. There was no way he could hope to keep up with Sherlock’s thought process; the man’s mind was a perpetual motion machine, a brilliant paradox of movement. If John didn’t know any better, he would think Sherlock was an Adept, one who had figured out how to use the Aura to increase his cognitive function. In spite of that, John still managed to glean most of the important information.  
  
He knew, for instance, that Sherlock was hunting a spy. Moriarty had managed to plant one in London, right in the heart of Britain, and whoever it was had caused no end of trouble for the monarchy. In fact, according to Sherlock, this spy was partly responsible for Britain’s routing in France. He or she had fed Moriarty intelligence on Britain’s retreat plans, which is what allowed the Empire’s troops to catch up with British forces on Echo Beach. John had needed to walk around the Praxeum a good three times after Sherlock let that one slip, breathing warm summer air in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying to stop the shaking in his clenched fists. He only calmed down after he returned to the room and saw Sherlock, dark curls falling across his sweaty forehead, staring intently at the laptop. It was only a matter of time.  
  
Consequently, John wasn’t too surprised when, after eight days, his phone vibrated noisily on his nightstand, waking him from the light doze he’d fallen into on one of his rare trips back to the bedsit. The number was familiar. Sherlock had programmed it into John’s phone himself.  
  
 _Meet me at the hospital. We’re going to catch a rat. SH_  
  
A second later, the phone vibrated again.  
  
 _Could be dangerous. SH_  
  
As if that were the afterthought. Goddamn Sherlock.  
  
John grabbed his gun and ran out the door before the screen went dark.  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

Lungs burning, John skidded to a stop, clutching the room’s door frame. He chose to catch his breath later and asked a question instead.“Where did you get that suit?”  
  
Sherlock turned towards the door slowly, first with his head and then with the rest of his body. John had no idea where the other man had learned to _turn around_ sarcastically, though that hardly mattered. An exquisitely tailored, ridiculously expensive, and obviously designer suit was obscuring the bandages covering most of Sherlock’s thin torso. He looked spoiled. He looked powerful. He looked good.  
  
“I tell you I know the identity of Moriarty’s agent in England and you ask me how I managed to dress myself? Honestly, John.” Sherlock pushed past John into the corridor, brushing the back of his hand over John’s rumpled shirt as he went through the door. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started texting, nimble fingers skittering across the keys.  
  
It took effort to wrench his eyes from the overworked buttons on Sherlock’s chest. “You’re mad. Do I need to remind you that you were shot in the lung last week? The government, law enforcement, _anyone but you_ should be taking care of this.”  
  
“Those incompetents? If they could handle themselves, they wouldn’t need me.” Sherlock spun on his leather heel, slipping his phone back in his pocket. “There, they’re informed. As for me, I’m almost healed. As weak as you are, you’re a remarkably effective medical Adept. Besides, I said dangerous and here you are.” Low hospital light glinted wickedly off pale eyes. “Would you like to come?”  
  
“God, yes.”  
  
Sherlock ended up hopping into their taxi ahead of John, vibrating like a strummed guitar string. His voice vibrated too, with excitement, as he gave directions to the cabbie. “Belgravia. Eaton Square, quickly now.” He turned to John. His attention was so focused, it was almost suffocating. “Her name is Irene Adler. She’s from the Colonies, New York. She’s set herself up here as a dominatrix catering to London’s elite. The Woman. Hides in plain sight. She even has a web presence. Very clever.”  
  
Lights blurred together outside the taxi’s windows until they merged into one continuous stream. It was already dark, but the air was still stifling. Summer in London seemed to get more unbearable with each passing year.  
  
John frowned, considering. “A dominatrix? I suppose that makes sense. Especially if she makes house calls. Discreet, access to the homes of government officials..a blackmail goldmine. And it’s not something people want to chat about over tea and toast. Or target in an official inquiry.”  
  
“Exactly right.” The corners of John’s mouth twitched up. Approval from Sherlock was rare, mere myth in some quarters. “I found her through discrepancies in the data. Over the last year, a suspiciously large number of high-ranking monarchy members have transferred large sums of money to a travel agency in Manchester before disappearing, almost certainly with Adler, for days at a time. From there, the money was funneled through numerous fronts until it finally landed in a bank account in the Cayman Islands under the name of one Lillie Langtry.”  
  
Sherlock paused for a moment to make sure John was keeping up. John’s blue eyes were wide, but he nodded, so Sherlock continued. “Coincidentally, Lillie Langtry was also the registered owner of a small but successful escort service which operated in the New Jersey Colony up until three years ago, the same time Adler arrived in London. The escort service just happened to have identical financials to one of the Empire’s shell companies I found buried in the data I liberated from France. The obvious conclusion: Langtry and Adler are the same person. Moriarty must have noticed her skill, promoted her, sent her to London to spy.”  
  
John didn’t bother to hide his amazement. “That was incredible. Absolutely splendid.”         
  
Sherlock preened, actually preened, under John’s praise. Evidently, compliments were not a common experience for him. A shame, that.  
  
“It was obvious. Now we apprehend her.”  
  
They spent the remainder of the journey planning. Basically, the plan involved Sherlock going in the front, John going in the back, and Adler getting caught in the middle. As they exited the cab, it occurred to John that Sherlock might have lied about texting for back up. Oh well. Too late now. The cab was already gone.  
  
John breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, preparing a thread of Aura. Sherlock reached out as if to clasp John’s shoulder, then stopped as if he’d thought better of it, and instead gave a sharp nod before strolling towards the front of the building.    
  
When he reached the back entrance of the building, John took the thread of Aura he’d prepared earlier and slipped it into the door’s lock. While his specialty was the human body, he was good with most small-scale, delicate work. Maybe he couldn’t blast a door open, but he could damn well jimmy a lock. He blocked the wires responsible for triggering the alarm, then moved the metal tumblers individually to open the door. So far, so good. Too bad getting in was the easy part. He wondered how Sherlock was doing.  
  
The servant’s stair was exactly where Sherlock had told him it would be, immediately to the right of the back door. After checking the area for hostiles, he began to climb. Adler’s office was on the third floor. That’s where she was most likely to be.  
  
John paused when he reached the third floor landing. Of course, as soon as he arrived he heard a massive and terrifying crash from the direction of Adler’s office. At least, John thought it was the same direction. He took off running, adrenaline pulsing, heart pounding a steady litany of _please don’t be too late_.  
  
He burst through the door of the office, his power and his gun both locked and loaded, only to be met with a decidedly empty, extremely dark room. Apparently John or Sherlock or both of them had misjudged, because this wasn’t an office at all, but some sort of observation station. And instead of having four opaque walls, there were only three. Where the fourth wall should have been was a giant two-way mirror, giving any hypothetical occupant an unobstructed view of the dungeon-like bedroom on the other side. Or, in this case, John could see a magnificently beautiful woman, who he assumed was Adler, choking Sherlock with a leather bullwhip. The tall man was completely motionless; his legs weren’t kicking, his arms weren’t flailing, and his crisp white shirt was rucked up where Adler’s legs straddled his sides.  
  
Goddamn that bloody fucking impulsive idiot. They should have waited for backup. They should have planned better. Nothing for it now. John grabbed at the Aura, took in as much as he could, and aimed it all at Adler’s brain. A quick poke in the right place, and she’d be out like a light. He poked, hard.  
  
Nothing happened. What? John tried again. Nothing! He couldn’t get into her brain, couldn’t affect her body. And there was no time left, no time to figure out why or how. Sherlock was dying.  
  
John did not hesitate. He lifted his gun, aimed, fired. The glass between him and Sherlock shattered, shards of silver raining through the air. The woman slumped sideways, a hole uglying the back of her perfectly coiffed head.  
  
He leaped through the shattered glass, avoiding the sharp edges around the frame. Two steps later and he was at Sherlock’s side, heaving the dead woman off his back, turning him over, flooding him with Aura. Shit. Perfect. More lung damage, more damage to the chest, slight damage to the brain. John focused on triage, increasing blood flow to Sherlock’s brain and hyper oxygenating his blood.  
  
An eternity later, a few seconds later, Sherlock opened his eyes. Long, thin fingers fluttered upwards automatically, stretching towards the raw sores the whip had rubbed on Sherlock’s neck.  
  
“John.” Sherlock’s voice was rough and weak, but he smiled broadly when his eyes landed on Adler’s corpse. “You killed her for me.” He coughed out a long wheeze, eyes crinkling in equal parts pain and amusement.  
  
Oh God. Sherlock was actually laughing about this. John wondered if it would be unethical for him to throttle an injured patient. Before he could decide, he heard sirens outside the building. The cavalry had arrived.  
  
That only made Sherlock wheeze harder. “I told you they were incompetent.”  
  
Bloody hell. What could John do but laugh with him? Surrounded by blood and glass and the literal specter of death, John laughed harder than he had in years.  
  
Once they made it outside again, a silver-haired man with tired brown eyes materialized out of the crowd, directly in front of Sherlock’s gurney. The man sighed and pressed his lips together, shaking his head slightly as he did. “A text, Sherlock? If you’d bothered to tell us anything, anything at all, we may have caught a live spy rather than a corpse. And this,” the man waved a hand at the ambulance waiting to cart Sherlock back to Barts, “would not be necessary. Those poor nurses. They’ll never be rid of you, at this rate.”  
  
The man’s words were equal parts frustration and fond exasperation. In a rare flash of psychic clarity, John realized that this could very well be him in fifteen years, if he survived the war: wrinkled, overworked, close to the ground, and still chasing after Sherlock. The clarity was not welcome. A deep furrow appeared between John’s eyes as he tried to banish the thought.  
  
Maybe he was too obvious about it, or those brown eyes were sharper than they first appeared, because the man noticed John’s sudden distress. “You alright, mate?” Concern settled like a dusting of new snow over the man’s face and voice. It made him seem brighter, purer. John nodded.  
  
Sherlock pulled the oxygen mask away from his face to make the introduction. “John, this is Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade of New Scotland Yard. Lestrade, this is Adept John Watson, Captain in His Majesty’s army, and my assistant.”  
  
Greg’s eyebrows shot up as he leaned over the gurney to shake John’s hand. “Assistant?”  
  
John shot Sherlock a withering look, which Sherlock roundly ignored. “His colleague. And his doctor.” He let go of Greg’s hand and smiled ruefully. “I’m doing a bang-up job of that right now, clearly. ”    
  
“Ah, a medical Adept! Not many of those round these days. Where did you come up?”  
  
“Barts Praxeum. I’m on a military teaching rotation. I’ll ship out with the new recruits after the new year.”  
  
Greg’s eyes lit up. “Barts! So you must be a Bats supporter. I grew up right next to the Praxeum. From age nine through graduation, I would only wear red. Drove my mum mad.”  
  
“Yes! More the rugby than the footy though. I played rugby there myself, in my student days. I have a massive pile of red and white gear sitting in storage. I could get some out, if you’d like, let you look through it. I’m always looking to unload some, especially to a fellow supporter.”  
  
“That’s brilliant, mate! Say, let me give you my mobile num-”  
  
Sherlock reached his limit at exactly that moment, apparently, because he snatched the mobile out of Greg’s hand and slammed it to the ground, hard. “Yes, I get it, you both _bleed red_. Please allow me to remind you that I am _injured_.”  
  
Greg blinked at the splinters of his mobile for a long moment before bending down to scoop them up. He dumped the pieces into his jacket pocket before acknowledging Sherlock. When he spoke, he spoke quietly, resigned and disappointed. “Right then. I’ll be at the hospital tomorrow for your statements. Both of your statements.” He disappeared into the darkness.  
  
John was beside himself. “Oi! What the bloody fuck, Sherlock?”  
  
It took courage to stand toe-to-toe with a spitting mad military Adept. Unfortunately, as far as John knew, no one had ever accused Sherlock of cowardice. “There are more important things happening than the all-Praxeum rugby league! I make it a rule to never indulge idiocy.”  
  
“You’re more important, you mean.” John hissed and his eyes narrowed. “Are you such a child? You stop being the center of attention for thirty seconds and you throw a tantrum?” He turned his back to Sherlock, took two steps, then whirled around again. “Is this how you treat all your friends?”  
  
Flashing police lights cast long shadows across the sharp planes of Sherlock’s face, which was currently contorted in indignant fury. It was the first time John had seen him look ugly. “I don’t have friends!”  
  
John stiffened, fist clenched. “Then no wonder you’re such a lonely, miserable bastard. I’m just an idiot who’s known you for a week, but even I can see that. Oh, excuse my stupidity, observe that.” Was that hurt that surfaced in Sherlock’s pale eyes, suppressed quickly and ruthlessly? Surely not. He started to leave,  intent on getting to his dreary, dismal bedsit as quickly as possible.  
  
Sherlock’s voice cut through the space between them, almost violently, but his words did not match his tone. “Wait, John! You’re my doctor, you have to come with me, to Barts. To make sure I won’t die.”  
  
“I’m off duty.” He kept walking.  
  
When Sherlock responded, his voice sounded confused. “What can I do to make you normal again?”  
  
“You can start by apologizing to Greg.” He didn’t slow down to see if Sherlock heard.  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the end of Act I.

As is the rule with such things, nothing ever went wrong in singles. John made it three blocks closer to the tube station before an expensively innocuous black car slowed to a crawl beside him. Suddenly fearing retribution for his role in the night’s events, he ducked in the alley to his left. He pulled out his phone and palmed his gun, unsure which would be more helpful until he got a better handle on the situation.  
  
For better or for worse, his indecision died a quick death. The sound of the car’s window rolling down was immediately succeeded by a strangely flat, profoundly disinterested female voice. “Adept Watson? Would you get in the car, please?”  
  
John stepped back into the glow of the streetlights. He had been absolutely justified in hiding. There was no need to feel foolish. Emotions rarely obey logic, however, and when John caught sight of the woman’s face, as she glanced up briefly from her mobile, he felt extremely foolish indeed. That, plus Sherlock’s arseholery outside Adler’s building, conspired to make him downright belligerent. “Why should I?”  
  
She shrugged and smiled distractedly. Even her gestures were flat, like she pretended to be human for appearance’s sake but found it a dreadful chore. “To make my job easier?” She opened the door. If anyone else had opened the door it would have come off as an invitation, but this woman made the action seem like mere happenstance. “Do you need me to threaten you?”  
  
Mentally mirroring the woman’s earlier shrug, John slid into the backseat of the car. He shut the heavy door, which locked, and the car merged back into traffic. Well, that certainly fit with the theme of the day. “Since you already seem to know my name, may I ask yours?”  
  
The woman paused, stilling for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Finally, without looking up from her mobile, she answered. “Uh...Anthea?”  
  
“That’s not really your name, is it?”  
  
Again, she paused. “What do you think?”  
  
Obviously, conversation was not going to be an option. Anthea hadn’t issued a declarative statement yet, and a sudden reversal in the woman’s odd behavior did not seem likely. Simply put, there was no ghost in this machine. Something was wrong with this woman. John could feel it.  
  
Silence reigned for the remainder of the journey. The car eventually pulled into what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. Then the doors were unlocking, Anthea was shooing, and John’s shoes were hitting concrete.  
  
A man was waiting in the exact middle of the warehouse. He wore a three-piece suit, expensive in the same way the car was expensive, and held a plain, black umbrella in his pale hand. The man hadn’t left middle-age, but his dyed and styled brown hair was thinning on the top, and he was tall. Tall like Sherlock. He reeked of Monarchy.  
  
And he was an Adept.  
  
John felt the unmistakable touch of Aura on his thoughts. He knew from the pranks he’d pulled during his school days that the vast majority of Adepts would be unable to sense the microscopic tendril; but John had spent years focusing on the small, on the intricate, on the body. He knew this man was trying to nudge him into compliance, into malleable trust. Ok, then. This stranger was an empathic Adept, most skilled at manipulating emotion. And he was incredibly skilled for someone so strong. John grabbed his own strand of Aura and wrapped it around the other man’s tendril. In the blink of eye, John had twisted the formerly straight tendril into a rough approximation of a dog.  
  
The man’s thin, aristocratic lips twitched in what may have been a smile, but the attempt was undermined by the unyielding hardness of his eyes. “Very impressive, John Watson.”  
  
John hammered down his satisfaction. He needed to focus. “If you wanted to talk, you could have just asked. I’m very obliging.”  
  
“Is that so? I was under the impression you were more the violent sort. One could go so far as to say that violence has become your default: an automatic response turning you toward destruction the way a plant’s leaves turn toward the sun. Or did you not kill a woman less than an hour ago?”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“What is the nature of your relationship with Sherlock Holmes?”  
  
The question brought John up short. What was his relationship with Sherlock Holmes? For a split second he considered saying there was no relationship. That whatever they’d been doing for the last eight days had splintered along with Greg’s phone. But that was so untrue, so patently false, that the creepy umbrella man would probably laugh in his face if he tried to say it. So he tried something else. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”  
  
“Everything is my business.”  
  
Anthea wandered over from the car then and handed the man a tablet. Before she stepped away, the man brushed her temple lightly with his fingertips.  
  
John looked back and forth between them. Realization dawned. He’d been right. Something was wrong with Anthea.  
  
“You’re using the Aura to make her act like that.”  
  
“I’m merely using my empathic ability to ensure her loyalty. It is unfortunate, but a necessity nonetheless. The consequences of betrayal are much too high. Again, was it not you who just shot a woman in the head for selling secrets?”  
  
John licked his lips and breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. If he ever needed help centering, it was now. Bile churned in his stomach. “Who are you?”  
  
“An interested party.”  
  
“She has rights.”  
  
“I am interested in our common survival, not rights. Rights do not exist.”  
  
“You’re wrong.”  
  
“Wrong does not exist either. There is only power and weakness, and currently, the balance of power is shifting in Moriarty’s favor. If this,” the man lifted the umbrella in Anthea’s direction, “is the cost of safeguarding the civilization we’ve built, so be it.”  
  
“You know, for an empath, you show a startling lack of empathy. You must be Monarchy.”  
  
Smug lines appeared in the corners of the man’s eyes. “I hold a minor position in His Majesty’s government, yes.”  
  
The bile in John’s stomach churned even more fiercely. A powerful Adept was insinuating himself into Britain’s command structure? Was this amoral empath an exception to the rule, as John hoped, or the rule itself? He thought he might throw himself into traffic if Moriarty actually had a point. “Then you’re a government official who has no respect for his fellow citizens? For non-Adepts? Or just no respect for Anthea?”  
  
“On the contrary, John. I respect what is respectable, and what is more respectable than service to one’s homeland? I respect...Anthea...a great deal, because she serves. I respect you for the same reason. Which is why you’re here. Do you plan to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes?”  
  
“I don’t think that’s any of your business either.”  
  
“If you do continue, I would be willing to pay you a meaningful sum of money on a regular basis.”  
  
“In exchange for what?”  
  
“Information. Nothing you’d feel uncomfortable with. Just tell me what he’s up to.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I worry about him. Constantly.”  
  
That settled it. The man spoke like he wanted to make a three-piece suit out of Sherlock’s skin. John would give him nothing. “I killed a spy today. You’ve brought it up twice, in fact. And now you’re asking me to be your informant. No.”  
  
The man chuckled, amused. “But I haven’t mentioned a figure.”  
  
“Don’t bother.”  
  
The man looked mildly dismayed, his composure fraying for the first time. He pursed his lips slightly. “Can it be that Sherlock, of all people, has managed to make you trust him? So quickly? As he said, he does not have friends. He doesn’t know how to have friends.”  
  
“Who the hell are you?”  
  
The smug smile was back. “The closest thing Sherlock will ever have to a friend.”  
  
“Which is?”  
  
“An enemy. Or so he would say.”  
  
“Are we done here?”  
  
“That’s up to you.”  
  
When John held his tongue, the man raised his eyebrows and began to walk away, twirling his umbrella like a schoolboy. “It’s time to choose a side, John Watson.” And then he was gone.  
  
Anthea opened the car door. “Would you like a lift home?” He got in the car.  
  
Sleep was elusive that night. John turned the encounter with the man over and over in his mind. Who was he? Was Sherlock in danger? Or, worse, was Sherlock dangerous? By the time John got to Sherlock’s room the next morning, he was running on tea and Aura.  
  
Sherlock’s head snapped up when John entered the room. He looked good; he was standing, dressed in a new suit just as spectacular as the last, and the only visible sign of his near-strangling was a vicious, scabbed bruise around his neck. He also looked worried. Ah, right. The phone incident. John nearly had forgotten.  
  
Greg was there too, sitting in John’s usual chair, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee. Where Sherlock frowned anxiously, Greg was grinning. Greg spoke first. “I don’t know what you said to him last night, John, but you’re a miracle worker.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Greg stood up and pulled a mobile out of his pocket. “Sherlock gave me a new phone. In all the years he’s been picking my pockets and breaking my things, he’s never returned anything. This is very nearly an apology.”  
  
Sherlock looked like he’d swallowed a kitten. “Are you happy now?”  
  
“Well...yes. If Greg’s forgiven you.” Sherlock relaxed, slightly, until John continued. “There’s something else I need to speak with you about. I met an acquaintance of yours last night.”  
  
“An acquaintance?”  
  
“An enemy.”  
  
“Oh. Which one?”  
  
“You have more than...no, he’s in the Monarchy. A powerful Adept. Empathic.”  
  
Sherlock pressed the palms of his hands together thoughtfully and raised his fingertips to his chin. His suit jacket was slung across the bed, leaving Sherlock in only a charcoal dress shirt.  
  
“Ah. Did he offer you money to spy on me?”  
  
“Well...yes, actually. How did you know that?”  
  
Greg, who had been fiddling with his new mobile, snapped back to attention when the other men’s words finally registered. “Someone offered you money to spy on Sherlock?”  
  
Sherlock moved one hand to wave dismissively at Greg, then immediately moved it back to its former position. “Relax. It’s just Mycroft.”  
  
“ _It’s just Mycroft_?” Voice strained by incredulity, John barely managed to keep his face under control.  
  
“Yes. Mycroft. My brother, unfortunately. He’s always sticking his fat nose where it doesn’t belong.”  
  
As soon as he heard _brother_ , Greg slouched into the chair and went back to his phone. When John heard _brother_ , he nearly went into cardiac arrest. Except, now that he thought about it, of course the man was Sherlock’s brother. The height, the smugness, the _three-piece suit_. If there were two families in Britain producing offspring like that, the country would have burned to the ground long ago.  
  
“Your brother! Did you know he uses his power to control non-Adepts. He has this assistant, she told me her name was Anthea...’  
  
Sherlock did not act surprised in the least. “Yes. I bet he gets off on it too, the arrogant tosser.”  
  
“You know and you don’t care?”  
  
“Why should I care?”  
  
“Because she’s a person! People matter, Sherlock.”  
  
Sherlock crossed to the other side of the bed, crowding into John’s space. All John could see were eyes. Sharp eyes and sharp cheekbones and sharp lips. It would be so easy to hurt himself, if he wasn’t careful.  
  
When Sherlock answered, his voice was sharp too. “Would it make a difference for _people_ , John, if I cared? I do my work, and I do it better when I don’t have emotional _entanglements_ slowing me down.”  
  
They were so close. If John twitched his hand, he could encircle Sherlock’s slender wrist with his fingers and take his pulse. But that wouldn’t do. Instead, John extended a little branch of Aura, an olive branch, and touched it gently to Sherlock’s long neck, right on the carotid artery. Just to feel.  
  
Then Greg was talking. “Stop looming, Sherlock, you look like you’re about to eat the man.” Greg. Right, John knew that. Greg was there. To take their statements. The DI took out a voice recorder and a notepad. “Are we ready?”  
  
“Don’t make me into something I’m not to ease your conscience, John.” Sherlock waited a moment before he stepped back, purposeful and deliberate. He flopped onto the bed, right on top of the jacket. “We’re ready.”  
  
Twelve hours later, Sherlock was released from Barts. The nurses were ecstatic; Sandy bought a cake and Lorraine put up some streamers around the nurses’ station. John, however, was conflicted. Sherlock was, by all measures, intolerable. After little more than a week, it was clear that the man was rude, childish, and entitled. His brother was clearly psychotic and Sherlock probably was as well.  
  
But. There was the way they’d laughed together. The way Sherlock had tried to make amends, in his own way, after he’d crossed the line. The rush of blood in Sherlock’s veins under a feather light touch of Aura.  
  
John sat in his office, surrounded by veritable mountains of paperwork, and sighed. He was lying to himself. He wasn’t conflicted at all. Sherlock had only been gone for twenty minutes, and John already missed him. Who was he kidding though? Sherlock didn’t have friends. John resigned himself to five months of extreme boredom until his deployment and picked up a pen.  
  
Which made it all the more surprising when Sherlock texted him the next day.  
  
 _Come to the morgue after your shift_.  
  
How could John not go, after everything? When he arrived in the morgue, he was greeted with the sight of Sherlock, bent over a microscope and harassing a mousy, nervous-looking girl at the same time. It felt like a gift.  
  
Sherlock noticed him, of course. “Oh, John, good.”  
  
“Why are you here?”  
  
“I come here frequently. Molly,” the nervous girl gave a tremulous smile, “sets aside bodies for me, and select organs, for my experiments. That your teaching rotation is here is good luck. Most convenient.”  
  
“Oh. Why am I here?”  
  
“You’re moving in.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’ve found an apartment in central London. The landlady owes me a favor. Since I can see from the state of your nails that you hate your bedsit and we have yet to murder each other, I thought you might like to move into the second bedroom. Together we should be able to cover rent.”  
  
“Oh. Okay. Yes. Brilliant.” Coherent sentences were beyond John, apparently.  
  
“Perfect. 221B Baker Street. We’ll go now.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got away from me, so I'm splitting it in two. The plot is based on The Man with the Twisted Lip.

“Obviously, it was a cat.”  
  
John folded the newspaper aggressively, embarrassed and struggling not to show it. “You didn’t hear her talk about it! She called in when it was sick. She left early last week when the neighbor couldn’t sit with it. She referred to it as ‘the baby,’ for God’s sake! All evidence pointed toward a grandchild, not a bloody cat.”  
  
Although he couldn’t see Sherlock rummaging around in the kitchen from where he sat in his armchair, John could imagine what the other man looked like: blue dressing gown fluttering around him, forehead wrinkling as he checked the cabinets for biscuits. They had been living at 221B for almost two months, giving John ample time to learn Sherlock’s odd habits. Like how Sherlock refused to eat while he worked a case, and adopted the diet of an unsupervised ten-year-old the rest of the time. He also didn’t have to see Sherlock’s face to know that he was smiling. “Ah, but you forgot the most relevant piece of information. What human child could endure the constant attention of our dear Nurse Sandy? It had to be an animal, and this woman is definitely the cat type. Have you seen her shoes?”  
  
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who gave our dear Nurse Sandy a birthday present for her cat in front of his students today.”  
  
“Of course not. Only you could be that stupid, John.”  
  
John gave up on the paper entirely, slapping it onto the table. “You're dead to me.” Sherlock snorted. “No, I mean it. That's not a…an idiomatic expression. This conversation? In my mind, I'm having it with a semi-animated corpse. God knows you already look like one.”  
  
“Why, thank you, John. How kind of you to say.”  
  
John was saved further humiliation by the chime of Sherlock's mobile. There was a beat of silence, after which Sherlock flounced out of the kitchen and into his bedroom. He’d given up the search for biscuits, apparently. He emerged minutes later, fully dressed, and made a beeline for the coat rack.  
  
That was unusual. Sherlock didn’t normally leave the apartment when there was no case on, especially not without John. “Where are you going?”  
  
Sherlock was winding a blue, cashmere scarf around his neck. It was October now and getting chilly, especially at night. “To speak with someone. Unless you believe my time would be better spent hearing about the particulars of your day? Besides, we’re out of biscuits. Buy some more. And some milk. We need milk and biscuits." The door slammed and Sherlock was gone.  
  
“Brilliant.” Alone, John decided to take advantage of the situation. When would he have a better opportunity to all asleep in front of the telly. It would be just like old times. He closed his eyes, determined to have a quiet night.  
  
Unfortunately, the night refused to be silenced. John jerked awake a half hour later, startled by the doorbell. He wiped the drool from his chin - he was grateful Sherlock wasn't around to see _that_ , considering the cat situation earlier - and adjusted his jumper before descending. It couldn’t be Sherlock; even if Sherlock forgot his keys, which he didn’t, he would pick the locks or shimmy up a drainpipe before he rang the doorbell. Maybe it was Greg, though he usually called. "Don't trouble yourself, Mrs. Hudson, I’ll get it!" He cracked open the door.  
  
It wasn’t Greg. A woman stood in the doorway, the fashionable highlights in her close-cropped brown hair reflecting the glow from the streetlamps. She was small in stature and not unattractive, although John strongly suspected she’d had work done in the recent past. When she spoke, her voice was high and demanding. “My name is Marion Hatch. I need to see Sherlock Holmes. I have an urgent case.”  
  
John opened the door the rest of the way. “Sherlock Holmes isn’t in right now-”  
  
“But you are his assistant, are you not? I saw you on the telly, during that prostitute spy hullabaloo a few months back.”  
  
“I’m not his assistant!”  
  
“Then what are you?”  
  
“I’m his...well, I’m his...John. Er, sorry, I’m John Watson.”  
  
Marion drew together her over-waxed eyebrows, decidedly unamused. “I’m deadly serious, Mr. Watson. My husband died five weeks ago-”  
  
“My condolences, Mrs. Hatch.”  
  
“Thank you, but I’m not entirely sure the sentiment is necessary. Earlier this evening I was on my way to dinner, you see, when I saw the strangest thing: my dead husband Cyrus, very much alive, standing on the balcony of a club in Soho.”  
  
“Are you sure it was him? If he just died...I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but the mind does play tricks-”  
  
“I wasn’t seeing things. Trust me, Mr. Watson, there was no love lost between my husband and I. The only thing I inherited when he died was his debt. Surely, you can understand why I’d want to track the bastard down. And before you ask, I’ve already been to the police. They listened politely and showed me the door. It’s time I took my problem to the private sector.”  
  
“Maybe, if you come back tomorrow, you can talk to Mr. Holmes-”  
  
Marion cut him off, pulling out her checkbook. “I will pay you one thousand pounds if you go with me to the club right now. There will be plenty more where that came from if you can help me find him.”  
  
John blinked. He would hop on one foot and whistle for a thousand pounds. A wild goose chase seemed little enough effort. “Alright then. Let me get my jacket.”  
  
The club they pulled up to, called The Society, was young and trendy, a far cry from the locales John liked to frequent. There was a line of people waiting to outside, but getting in proved easy. Marion simply walked up the woman who was standing in front of the door, a woman with a tight ponytail and even tighter skirt, and demanded to speak with a manager.  
  
As the woman led them across the threshold, John was immediately assaulted by the mixed odors of alcohol and sweat. Every surface was painted a deep burgundy, making the club appear even darker and danker than it actually was, and the claustrophobic effect was amplified by the crush of bodies. The darkness, however, could not disguise the pale figure on the far side of the foyer. The familiar face was engaged in a heated conversation with a generically handsome man in a metallic grey suit.  
  
John laid his hand on Marion’s shoulder and edged closer to be heard over the music. “Sherlock is here!”  
  
“What?”  
  
“That man, over there, in the long black coat.” John pointed at him. “That’s Sherlock Holmes.”  
  
That’s when Sherlock caught sight of them. He stared blankly in their direction, face impassive. The man he was talking to followed Sherlock’s line of sight; when he saw John standing there he broke into a delighted grin and waved them over.  
  
The grey-suited man clapped John on the shoulder as soon as he was in range. “You must be the infamous John Watson! Sherlock didn’t tell me you were coming. Ah, but that’s our Sherlock. Probably thought it’d be awkward, the old meeting the new.”  
  
John didn’t know what to say to that, so he offered a stilted smile and remained polite. “Yes, I’m John. And you are...”  
  
The man laughed as if John had just told a hilarious joke. “Victor Trevor. I own this club.”  
  
Marion cut in then, which was fortunate, since Sherlock looked positively apoplectic. If looks could kill, the strongest medical Adept in the world couldn’t save Victor. “You’re the owner? I need to speak with you privately about a missing person I saw here earlier this evening.”  
  
“Do you now? Very well, then, follow me. We’ll take this to my office.”  
  
Victor led the way up the stairs with Marion right on his heels. John and Sherlock followed a few steps behind, side by side.  
  
It took several side-long glances back and forth before John decided to take the plunge. “Right, Sherlock, what are you doing here? I thought you hated places like this.”  
  
Sherlock glanced around disdainfully before answering. “I do. But in my line of work, it is necessary. I must visit these kinds of establishments occasionally to maintain my informant networks. It is vital. Unfortunately.”  
  
“Is that why Victor Trevor is so...familiar...with you? He’s in your network?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And he’s the one who texted you earlier.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
They reached the end of the stairs just in time to see Victor and Marion enter the office. Sherlock made a move in the direction of the office as well, but John caught hold of his sleeve. And John made sure it was the _sleeve_ he was catching hold of, and not the man. In the two months John had been living and adventuring with Sherlock, when he wasn’t working at the Praxeum, he had been exceedingly careful to never touch that pale skin. Sometimes John wondered if that made him a coward. He’d literally had his hands inside Sherlock’s chest, and now he felt too scared to even touch his hand. But he was too curious to hold back his question.  
  
“So what did Trevor mean by ‘old meets new’?”  
  
“John.”  
  
“He’s an informant?”  
  
“Must I repeat myself? Yes!”  
  
“Sherlock.”  
  
Sherlock tugged free of John’s hand, avoiding eye contact. “Not now.” He went in the office. John followed.  
  
Another man soon entered, at Victor’s request. Victor introduced him as Tom, The Society’s head of security. He was a thin fellow, not what John would typically imagine as security, with dull yellow hair and a thoroughly forgettable face. There was something off about him, but John couldn’t put his finger on it. He was probably just unsettled from running into Sherlock.  
  
It didn’t take long for Marion to tell her story. She finished by bringing up a picture of Cyrus on her phone and showing it to the men.  
  
Victor scratched his goatee thoughtfully. “I haven’t seen him. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t here. This is a very popular club, if I do say so myself. Tom? Tom? Hello, earth to Tom!” Victor snapped his fingers in front of the security man’s nose. “What do you think?”  
  
“Uh, I have not seen this man.”  
  
Marion was undeterred. “Mr. Holmes, you’re the genius, what do you think?”  
  
Sherlock scowled, eyes dark in the dim lighting. He was in a foul mood; not even blatant flattery could soothe him. “I think this is a colossal waste of time. Perhaps your last facelift affected your eyesight, or maybe it was the Botox. Why do you indulge such stupidity, John?”  
  
“She payed me one thousand pounds.”  
  
“No amount of money is worth this.” Staring daggers at everyone and everything, Sherlock swept out of the room.  
  
Marion looked annoyed, but not overly so, as she watched Sherlock leave. “I’m glad it was you who opened the door for me, Mr. Watson.” She turned back to Victor. “I would like to see the security footage, if you wouldn’t mind Mr. Trevor.”  
  
“Of course. I’ll have it prepared, you can pick it up tomorrow.”  
  
“Excellent. Lovely to meet you, Mr. Trevor. Tom.” She exchanged contact information with Victor, nodded to each man, then addressed John. “As for you, Mr. Watson, I’ll phone you tomorrow. Good evening, gentlemen.” Then she swept out of the room, following in Sherlock’s wake. Tom only stayed long enough to whisper a few mumbled words with Victor before exiting. That left John and Victor, alone together.  
  
John cleared his throat nervously. “Mr. Trevor, I’d like to ask you something else.”  
  
The corner’s of Victor’s mouth twitched up, like he was suppressing a smile. “Please, call me Victor. And, of course, you’re welcome to ask me anything.”  
  
“Good, then, ah...Victor. I was wondering what you meant earlier. When you said that thing. About it being awkward for Sherlock if the old met the new.”  
  
And there it was again, that smile he’d had when he’d first seen John. Unlike the first smile though, this one just looked mocking. “Surely I don’t have to explain myself?”  
  
“I’m afraid you do.”  
  
“You’re his new...boy. His new fling. He usually has one, even if they never last long. Although I do hear you’re live in, so maybe he’s a changed man. Stranger things have happened.”  
  
“What?” Wind whistled through John’s head. In two months, he’d never seen Sherlock with another person, let alone a...boy. Except Greg, of course, but Greg didn’t count.  
  
Victor strolled around to the front of his desk, sitting casually on the oak top. He was holding a pen in his hand, and with every word he spoke he thrust the tip of it at John, like he wanted to stab him. “We. Used. To. Fuck. Sherlock and I.”  
  
Victor’s words hit John harder than he’d expected, right in the gut. Why hadn’t he expected this? Sherlock was young and brilliant and gorgeous. He was abrupt, yes, but in certain circumstances that could be part of his charm. Of course he slept with other people.  
  
John hated that he actually had to resort to the Aura to keep his heart from racing too fast, too keep his adrenaline down. This was not a fight or flight situation.  
  
Victor continued. “Nothing to worry about, mate. We finished long ago. He’s moved on. To you, apparently. I haven’t seen him this vicious since his brother showed up here a few years back. And all because I let our little secret slip.” His voice dripped with condescension. “He must really like you. For whatever reason.”  
  
John had had enough. It was either leave or engage in physical violence, and John didn’t want to give Mycroft the satisfaction. He nodded stiffly at Victor and stalked from the room, fuming. He never should have taken this case, money be damned.  
  
He took the steps two at a time, which, as it turned out, was a bad idea. Because hovering at the bottom of the stairs, curls askew and elbows akimbo, was Sherlock. Evidently, he hadn’t taken the first taxi back to Baker Street, as John had thought. Or, more accurately, as John had hoped.  
  
Sherlock steadied John, placing his hands on John’s shoulders. “How do you feel about Chinese?”


	6. Chapter 6

John didn’t bother to conceal his surprise, instead relying on their situation for cover. Here he was, fresh from learning that Sherlock did, in fact, engage in...intimate activities, and may, in fact, be interested in engaging in said activities with John - if Victor could be trusted. And there was Sherlock, asking about Chinese. How anticlimactic.  
  
“John?” Sherlock shook John’s shoulders, once, hard. “Surely you can’t object. You’re always nagging me to eat.”  
  
“No. No, I...yes, Chinese is fine.”  
  
Sherlock noticed the unsteadiness in John’s voice. He let his hands slide from John’s shoulders and threw a dirty look up the stairs at the same time, a heat seeking missile aimed right at Victor’s throat. “Did he say something to you? He’s terrible, you know.”  
  
“No.” John straightened, became more certain. “No. Nothing I didn’t already know.”  
  
Although Sherlock looked dubious, he held his tongue. He was most likely planning a mid-meal ambush; he knew by now that a well-fed John was an accommodating John. For now, Sherlock simply pursed his lips and grabbed John’s hand, pulling him towards the road. The bones in John’s hand shifted together under the force of the grip.  
  
In the end, they went to the same Chinese restaurant they always went to, the one with the paint chipping off the bottom of the door handle. In the third week of their acquaintance, Sherlock had tried to explain the relationship between the bottom third of a door handle and the quality of food, but John had not fully absorbed the lesson. It was Sherlock’s fault, really. He’d been fingering the top button of his dress shirt the whole time he’d been speaking.  
  
On this night, Sherlock had buried his nose in his phone as soon as they’d sat down and hadn’t moved it since. John leaned back, anxious, and drummed the fingers of his left hand against the worn plastic of the table: pinky, ring, middle, index. Pause. Faster. Pinky, ring, middle, index. Pause. Faster. Pinky, ring, middle, index. Pause. Faster. Pinky, ring, middle, index. Pinky, ring, middle-  
  
“For the love of all that is holy, CEASE. THAT. RACKET.” Sherlock bit out the last three words, over-enunciating like his life depended on it.    
  
John thumped his index finger down, ready to get into the incredible weirdness of the club. Maybe if he started the conversation before the food came, he’d have a chance. Probably not, but a bloke could dream.  
  
As it turned out, he didn’t have a chance, but not because of Sherlock. Before either of them could speak, the television bolted to the ceiling in the corner of the room, which had been showing a football match, burst into static. The static quickly resolved into...Moriarty.  
  
John forgot everything he’d been about to say. So had everyone else in the restaurant, apparently, because the traffic on the street was suddenly deafening. A waitress rushed up to the telly, pushing the volume button frantically. Moriarty’s voice oozed into the room, soft and cloying.  
  
“...have warned your King repeatedly. I have warned the un-Collared who control your so-called government. And now I’m warning you directly.”  
  
The camera panned back to reveal a woman in British military fatigues. Her wrists were lashed to two thin, metal poles, one on each side of her, and her ankles were secured in the same way. The woman wasn’t unconscious, but she kept her chin tucked tight to her chest, allowing her tangled blond hair to obscure her face.  
  
Moriarty strolled over to the woman, mixing a skip into his walk after every other step. He stopped behind the captive, snaking his left hand, the one with the Ring, to rest on her stomach. At the same time, he reached his right hand up to stroke her hair. The camera moved again to center the two of them in the frame.  His next words were a venomous hiss into the woman’s ear.  
  
“Actions have consequences, sweetheart.”  
  
As he spoke, he twisted his hand violently into the woman’s hair and yanked, exposing her face to the camera.  
  
Forks crashed onto plates. The waitress who’d changed the volume sat heavily in a chair and started to cry. Sherlock stayed still and silent, unresponsive. John just felt sick.  
  
The prisoner was Princess Mary, daughter of the King.  
  
John knew that she’d gone to the Colonies to meet the troops and raise moral; she was well-liked, and she took her responsibilities as heir seriously. How could she have been taken? Her movements were supposed to be a closely guarded secret. It wasn’t like she’d been fighting on the front lines. Another spy, perhaps? The information had leaked somehow.     
  
And yet, there she was. Moriarty looked positively gleeful.  
  
“You see, darlings?” Moriarty was crooning, staring square into the camera. “This is your fault. I didn’t want to do this...” Sherlock rolled his eyes, the first move he’d made since the broadcast started. “...but you have to learn: as long as you let the un-Collared walk among you, as long as you resist the will of the Empire, you will be the ones who suffer.”  
  
John exchanged a heavy look with Sherlock. The Princess was a non-Adept.  
  
Moriarty withdrew his hands slowly and stepped away. He beckoned to someone off camera, grinning all the while.  
  
“Sebastian, if you please.”  
  
A beast of a man lumbered into frame. He cradled a long, wickedly curved blade against his body. The special reinforced sheath told John that it had been honed with Aura.  That blade would cut through bone like a hot knife through butter.  
  
Moriarty glided back to where he’d stood originally, presumably to get a better view of what was to come. He spoke again.  
  
“Mary of Britain. You have been charged with crimes against the Empire. I find you guilty. You are sentenced to death.”  
  
The Princess said nothing. She stared at the ground, the same as she had since the recording started. John wondered if she’d been drugged. Moriarty must not have wanted her to interrupt his monologue.  
  
“Do it.”  
  
Most of the people in the restaurant turned away. Not John. Not Sherlock.  
  
The man, Sebastian, swung the blade so quickly it blurred into itself. The hook hit the Princess in the groin, then ripped up through her abdominal cavity and chest, and came out her shoulder. Blood and viscera cascaded out of the tear, spilling onto the ground, splashing up Sebastian’s boots.  
  
John had seen a cow gutted at a slaughterhouse once. It had looked much the same. Except, he remembered, the cow had been unconscious.  
  
Moriarty clasped his hands together in obviously insincere sympathy. “I can only hope you take this to heart.” The screen winked back to static.  
  
Sherlock’s eyes were completely colorless when they caught John’s. They didn’t look human. “Another leak, John, another leak.”  
  
Someone in the street was screaming. Moriarty must have broadcast that on all the government channels simultaneously. It was nine o’clock on a Thursday night. Hundreds of thousands of people had seen that.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“That data. There was something else in it, something off. I didn’t put it together though, I was fixed on Adler. It was odd movements of liquor shipments, mostly. I figured it was simple money laundering. One of the Empire’s sham corporations paying too much to import vodka, rum, whiskey...and who needs liquor? Bars, restaurants, clubs...”  
  
Sherlock both his palms to his forehead, then together. “Clubs. Of course. He was taunting me. Both of them were taunting me. John, phone that woman you were with. I need you to ask her what her husband does for a living.”  
  
“Did for a living?”  
  
“Now!”  
  
John fumbled his mobile from his pocket and rang Marion. Her phone rang four times before she answered. Her voice sounded strained. He put her on speaker.  
  
“John, is that you?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Did you see what just happened.”  
  
“Yes. But I’m calling about something else. What did Cyrus do? As a job?”  
    
“Why are you asking-”  
  
John cut Marion off when Sherlock gestured for him to move faster. “Please, Mrs. Hatch, this is important. What did your husband do?”  
  
“Why, he was a secretary. At the Office of Royal Affairs. He helped maintain one of the Royal’s schedules.”  
  
John glanced up at Sherlock and leaned closer to the phone. He spoke deliberately. “Whose schedule, Mrs. Hatch.”  
  
“It was hers. Princess Mary’s.”  
  
Sherlock hung up the call. “The money laundering, the secretary, the strange coincidences tonight...Marion’s husband is the leak. And he was at Victor’s club. Victor is involved.” He took a deep breath. “She did see her husband at The Society. That wasn’t an accident. Victor texted me tonight just to get me down there. He probably has someone close to Marion on his payroll, someone he paid to get her to go to you, to get you to take her to the club. Just so we’d all meet there, so he could taunt us. To see if I could figure it out? Victor knew this was coming. The husband _must_ have been there too. Where was the husband?”  
  
Sherlock’s words were like fire in John’s brain, burning away the cobwebs. Of course. What were the odds that he would just walk into the same nightclub as Sherlock? What were the odds that Marion’s husband, a man privy to the Princess’s private schedule, would fake his own death, only to grow so careless as to be spotted by his wife at that same nightclub? Beyond that, John had no trouble believing Victor was the worst kind of traitorous scum. John’s frown deepened.  
  
“But why would Trevor risk everything just to taunt you. He said you two used to be involved, but he didn’t seem upset...”  
  
John trailed off. Sherlock looked murderous.  
  
“I don’t know yet, John! Damn him, I don’t know yet. Come on.”  
  
It took longer than it should have to get back to the club; everyone and their mother was milling about in the street, talking loudly and moving slowly. Sherlock had run his hands through his curls in frustration so many times that his hair stood at twice its normal height. When they finally arrived, Sherlock leapt from the taxi, throwing a wad of money blindly into the front seat.  
  
The line of people outside the club was gone, as was the tight-ponied, tight-skirted woman. Inside, the lights were on. Under harsh, white light, The Society’s burgundy walls recalled dried blood flaking away from an old wound. John wished he’d brought his gun.  
  
Although they searched high and low, Victor was nowhere to be found. They did, however, find Tom, the head of security, hiding behind some boxes in the storeroom behind the bar. Sherlock swooped down like a demon and hauled him into the open.  
  
“Where is Victor?” Tom shrank back, like Sherlock’s question pained him. “Tell me!”  
  
Tom said nothing.  
  
John wanted to do something. Anything. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, centered himself, and felt for the Aura. It was there, of course. It was always there, waiting just beyond the fabric of the physical world. He grabbed as much as he could and let it pool inside him.  
  
John was not Mycroft. He could not warp and bend this man’s thoughts, could not compel him to talk. Even if he could, he wouldn’t. There had to be something though. Perhaps John could speed up Tom’s heart, make him feel nervous. Maybe John could cut the oxygen flow to Tom’s brain, just a tiny bit, to confuse him. There had to be something. While Sherlock continued his interrogation, John gathered up the pooled Aura inside him and directed it’s flow, like a river down a hill, to Tom’s brain.  
  
Except, wait. Something was off. It was like...the inside of Tom’s head did not match the outside. Not in a metaphysical sense, but in terms of dimension. John shifted his flow of Aura slightly, running it down Tom’s face. No, it definitely did not match. The eyes he felt with his power were smaller and deeper set than what he could see. The nose felt finer, the mouth felt thinner.  
  
This was not Tom’s true face; or, rather, John and Sherlock were unable to perceive Tom’s true face because there was a mask of Aura over it. John only knew of one thing that could layer an illusion over reality in this way, and so seamlessly: a projectionist Adept. This was big.  
  
“There’s a projectionist mask over his face! I think it’s Cyrus!”  
  
Sherlock’s head jerked as John’s words penetrated. He was only distracted for a moment, a split second, but as any good soldier knows, that’s all it takes. Tom - or, Cyrus - reached behind his head frantically. His scrabbling hands landed on a heavy, glass bottle, which he swung right into the back of Sherlock’s head. Dazed, Sherlock’s grip on the man loosened. Cyrus writhed and twisted until he broke free, then pushed past John to exit the storeroom.  
  
John, who was still holding the Aura, paused briefly to delve Sherlock’s brain. Once he determined there was no immediate danger, he sprinted after Cyrus. He chased the masked man out the door and dodged after him into the alley behind the club.  
  
Sure, the man was desperate. John, however, was a trained soldier, and one who could use the Aura to keep his muscles at peak efficiency. Cyrus made it a total of five blocks before John got close enough to tackle him to the cold, wet ground. Not taking any chances, John used a tendril of power to block the oxygen to the man’s brain until he passed out. Then he phoned Lestrade.  
  
John heard Sherlock coming as he hung up with Greg; the wind blew through the shadowed alley, pushing the rhythmic beat of the tall man’s footfalls past John, into the open street beyond.  
  
“You caught him.”  
  
Sherlock leaned against the dripping brick wall to catch his breath. Blood matted his dark hair and dripped down his white face. John gave him a worried glance.  
  
“Maybe I should check you again. You don’t usually state the obvious.”  
  
“No, John, you _figured it out_. Something I didn’t.”  
  
“Had to happen sometime.”  
  
Sherlock straightened to his full height, still breathing hard, and poked Cyrus’s body with the tip of his polished leather shoe. His pupils were huge in the darkness. John was unsure what to do, so he continued.  
  
“You’re the brilliant one. You put everything together about Victor and the husband. You’re spectacular, the genius, like always.” Sherlock kept staring.  
  
John finally stopped, flustered. He’d been babbling. There was something about this night. About what Victor said, how Sherlock reacted, the horror of Moriarty’s message, the run down the alley. Something about tracking the path of one bead of blood as it slid down Sherlock’s neck, jewel bright. He must have lost his scarf, if John could see that much neck. A pity. John liked that scarf.  
  
“Yes. But you, John...”  
  
Sherlock leaned over the unconscious man sprawled on the ground, never breaking eye contact. He brushed the knuckles of hand across John’s oatmeal-colored jumper, leaving behind a faint streak of blood. John was frozen, in space, in time.  
  
“...tonight you were extraordinary. You’re extraordinary.”  
  
Sherlock tangled his hands into the jumper and closed the slight distance that remained between them. John closed his eyes. His lips felt numb; he could only feel Sherlock’s lips on his distantly, the roughness of chapped skin, the salty tang of sweat.  
  
The kiss was chaste, for what it was, and over before it began. Sherlock pulled back, just slightly, but his eyes were as intense as John had ever seen them. His deep voice was even deeper now, as rough as his lips had been.  
  
“I know what Victor must have told you. It’s true. I want more. I’m tired of waiting, and I want more from you.” Sherlock hesitated. “If you agree.”  
  
Oh, God, he wanted it. And Sherlock wanted him. Victor had told the truth about that, if nothing else. Yes, clearly there was still so much to talk about. But: first things first.  
  
John stepped over Cyrus, making one last sweep with Aura to confirm that he was well and truly out. He licked the pad of his thumb and brushed away a pearl of blood hovering in the hollow of Sherlock’s throat. Two months. Two months, and he finally had permission to touch.  
  
“I agree.”  
  
Sherlock didn’t smile, exactly, but his face relaxed, especially around the eyes. Ah, but that was beautiful. Sherlock was beautiful.  
  
John slid his thumb from Sherlock’s chest to his cheek, then to the back of his head. His fingers met sticky clumps of curls. He wondered what those curls felt like when they were clean. Careful to avoid putting too much pressure on the wound, John guided Sherlock’s head down.  
  
There was no numbness this time. John kissed Sherlock softly at first, testing. Sherlock tightened his hand on John’s jumper, then abandoned the jumper in favor of John’s shoulders. The wind still blew through the alley, but John couldn’t feel it. He tilted his head up further, straining for more. Damn, but sometimes it was inconvenient to be less-than-average height. Sherlock, blessed genius that he was, understood regardless; he moved his hand up to John’s neck, pulled him tighter, and slipped his tongue into John’s mouth. Sherlock tasted like sugar and...cigarettes. Naughty, naughty. He’d been cheating again.  
  
As if he knew what John was thinking and wanted to banish the thought, Sherlock bent down further and redoubled his efforts. That caused a new flavor to join the others: copper, John thought. No, not copper, exactly. Blood.  
  
John withdrew as far as he was able. Sure enough, a dark line snaked down Sherlock’s face, straight to its smeared end on the bow of Sherlock’s upper lip. John licked his own lips, uncertain what he should do now.  
  
“Well, lads, what’s this then?”  
  
John stumbled backwards, away from Sherlock, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Greg, along with half of New Scotland Yard, stood at the mouth of the alley, weapons at the ready.  
  
John raised an arm to shield his eyes from the torch light. “How did you get here so _bloody quickly_?” His voice sounded thin, but only a trifle unsteady.  
  
Greg grinned good-naturedly before coming over to clap John on the shoulder. “I didn’t think I’d be smiling tonight, with what happened to Princess Mary. But I should know by now to never underestimate you two. Snogging in a dark alley? That takes me back.” Greg actually looked wistful. “And Sherlock? You’ve got something. There, on your face.”  
  
Sherlock smiled widely as he grabbed John’s arm and used the sleeve of John’s jacket to clean the blood from his lips.                                
  



	7. Chapter 7

Cyrus knew nothing.  
  
After hours of questioning, that, at least, was clear. He had sold the Princess’s itinerary, but he hadn’t known who he was selling it to or what it would be used for. Victor had been his handler, yes, but Cyrus didn’t know where Victor had fled.   
  
His motive, to Sherlock’s great disappointment, was wholly mundane. As Marion had explained earlier, Cyrus had accumulated quite a bit of debt through his various failed business ventures; when Victor had approached him and offered to set up him up with a new life, Cyrus had jumped at the chance. The only thing left to do was wait and see if the team searching the club turned up anything useful.     
  
Unfortunately for New Scotland Yard, Sherlock was not good at waiting.  
   
“I should be there!” Sherlock slapped his hand on Greg’s desk, causing scattered files and pens and picture frames to shudder. He still looked like a monster from a child’s nightmare; he’d allowed John to stitch the cut on the back of his head, but he’d refused to wash or change his clothes. “Your people are horrid. They’ll trample everything of import!”   
  
Greg massaged his brow, exhausted. “You demanded to be here for the interrogation. You _chose_ not to go with the team to the club. What did you expect?”  
  
“I used to hope for competence. I have come to _expect_ stupidity at every turn.”  
  
John sighed as he stared into the murky depths of his tea. Dark alleys were all well and good, but Sherlock’s tongue was much sharper beneath fluorescent lights. Nothing could change the fact that Sherlock wasn’t...he just wasn’t _nice_. Not even a strangely spectacular snog had softened him. John inhaled the humid, earthy air rising from his mug and considered the different expressions cycling across Sherlock’s face as he badgered Greg. Perhaps, if one kiss hadn’t done it, two would. Or ten. Or more drastic measures.    
  
John was still musing on the subject when Greg’s phone rang. The call was mercifully short, and finally, _finally_ , Greg nodded at Sherlock. “They’re back.”   
  
Sherlock flapped out of the office before the sentence was over.   
  
“About bloody time.” Greg slumped down in his chair, relief radiating from him in waves as he rubbed circles into his temples. “If he hadn’t already had his head bashed in once tonight, I’d have done it myself.” He turned to John, who was standing to leave. “Can I have a quick word?”  
  
John tightened his grip on the mug, suddenly nervous. “Of course.” He sank back into his chair, slowly. Without a doubt, Greg wanted to talk about him and Sherlock.  
  
“I want to talk about you and Sherlock.” John grimaced; evidently, he was going to be right about everything tonight. Was this how Sherlock felt all the time? Maybe that’s why the man was wound so unbelievably tight. Greg plowed ahead.  
  
“I don’t know much about what’s between you two, except what I see. I’ve known Sherlock for a long time, years now, and what I see is that he’s been different these last few months. He’s been more...stable...recently, more bearable, and it doesn’t take an empath to know that’s down to you.”  
  
Uncomfortable, Greg shifted in his chair. He paused, choosing his next words carefully. “But you have to understand. Sherlock is so changeable. Before you, before the Adler affair, he was never with the same person more than a few times. Never. And I don’t think it’s something he can help, if you know what I mean. It’s like an itch, a compulsion. I can see he likes you, everyone can, but, well...you’re a mate, John, and I thought you should know that it might not be enough.”      
  
John took a long sip of tea, wringing his mind for something to say. Embarrassment and anger seeped through his thoughts like poisonous fog. “I appreciate the concern. But we haven’t even talked this through yet. Maybe we should figure out tomorrow before we start talking about commitment.” Besides, Greg had said it himself, and so had Victor; Sherlock was different with John. This was different.   
  
“I just want you to be careful. You’re a good man, John, but Sherlock...he’s still working on it.” That earned him an icy glare from John, who was offended on Sherlock’s behalf, but Greg refused to be cowed. He held up his hands in a placating gesture, his voice determined. “I know you don’t want to hear this, and I promise you, I would rather be picking through a bloody crime scene than having this conversation. But what kind of man would I be if I let you walk into this unprepared?”   
  
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do. No, Greg, don’t look at me like that, I really do. He is difficult. But like I said, we haven’t promised each other anything. I’m being deployed to the Colonies in four months anyway.” Although John thought Greg was being unfair - a compulsion, really? - he knew that the man’s heart was in the right place. He set his mug on Greg’s desk. “I only wish everyone had a bit more faith in him.”  
  
Greg lowered his hands, his duty fulfilled. “Genius never sleeps. That’s all I’m saying.”  
  
Genius never sleeps. John turned the words over in his mind, flipping them back and forth. There was a chance Greg had a point. “I’ll be careful.”  
  
Greg wheeled his chair back from his desk and stood. “Excellent. Let’s never speak of this again.”  
  
Over the next few days, John had plenty of time to stew over what Greg had said. Between his shifts at the Praxeum and Sherlock’s single-minded devotion to bringing in Victor, they barely spoke. Not that the time Sherlock devoted to the manhunt was misspent; he was eventually able to track Victor to a smuggling vessel that had evaded detection and escaped to Empire-controlled France on the night of the Princess’s execution. That, however, was where the trail went cold.   
  
The only remaining clue was a note Greg’s agents found in a locker at the dock where Victor had last been seen. An agent had already confirmed it was written by Moriarty himself. It was also addressed to Sherlock.  
  
“This doesn’t worry you? At all?” John waved a photograph of the note as he spoke. Weak morning light filtered in through the curtains, illuminating the worry on his face. He was tired from a particularly brutal night shift - his students were having trouble with what should have been a simple emergency cellular regeneration technique - and he was worried about Sherlock.   
  
The man in question was sprawled across a chair, eyes closed, his dressing gown tangled between his body and the backrest. “It interests me. I’ll leave the worrying to you.”  
  
John cracked his neck before reading the letter again:  
  
 ** _My Dearest Sherlock,_**  
  
 **_I was positively ecstatic when I heard you survived your unfortunate accident in France! I was so happy, I arranged a little present for you - did you enjoy my spy game? Victor has been_ so _obliging_ , _and he’s been singing your praises constantly ;)_**  
  
 **_When you get bored of all those Uncollared scum, you know where to find me! Until you do, I’ll be watching._**  
  
 **_XOXO Jim_**  
  
 **_P.S. Be a dear and say hello to your brother for me!_**  
  
“Sherlock, the insane, tyrannical leader of the Empire we’re fighting a war against - a war we’re currently losing, by the way - left you a note to tell you he has you under surveillance.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“This is like a love letter from a psychopathic seven-year-old.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
John collapsed in the chair directly across from Sherlock. He gave him a hard look. “Well, it bothers me.”  
  
Sherlock cracked open an eye. “I know.”  
  
A horn blared outside. John read through the note again. “A bit dramatic, don't you think. And the part about Mycroft-”  
  
“What is it like? To use the Aura?”   
  
John looked up to see Sherlock peering at him through the early gloom of their quiet apartment. He was used to abrupt subject changes by now, but he still sometimes found them disorienting. “Hmmmm. It’s like...it’s like when you close your eyes and you can’t see your hands, but you can feel them. You know exactly where they are, and that’s a comfort. You can use them too, as tools, accurately and precisely because they’re a part of you. The Aura is a part of everyone, you know, Adepts and non-Adepts. The difference is, I can feel it. I can feel it in you.”  
  
Sherlock drifted to the fireplace, hand closing over the hilt of the dagger he’d driven into the mantel last week. “You’re weak. Does that mean you feel the Aura less than other Adepts?”  
  
John tilted his head, considering. “No, I feel it the same. I have smaller hands, is all.”  
  
A dull thunk reverberated through the room as Sherlock jerked the dagger out of the mantel and immediately buried it back in the soft wood. “Even Mycroft’s metaphysical hands are bloated.” He turned his body to face John, but his eyes were on the floor. He pressed his pale pink lips together before he spoke again. “I’ll never know.”  
  
A light went on in John’s brain. He held up the letter. “Oh. That’s why you’re not worried. You think this is meant for Mycroft. Because he’s a powerful Adept in the Monarchy?”

“Please, John, he _is_ the Monarchy.”  
  
“You’re jealous.”  
  
Sherlock didn’t look up, but his mouth curled down and his eyes got small. Contempt surrounded him like the mist kicked up by a waterfall. That’s how John knew he’d stuck his finger right in the wound. “Are you jealous of me?”  
  
Sherlock could move so fast, when he wanted. He was in front of John in a breath, and he plucked the photo out of John’s hand in the next breath. “You’re jealous of Jim Moriarty.” Sherlock spit the words directly into John’s face.  
  
Nothing moved. Not the hands of the clock, not the cars outside, not the dust particles suspended in the beam of light slanting through the curtains. The only sound was Sherlock’s voice. “I know what you’re afraid of. Moriarty is insane, but he’s brilliant. Yes, the letter is meant for Mycroft, but it’s also meant for me. What if I take him up on his offer? What if I get _bored_ of all these _Uncollared_ and go to him? I bet he could keep me entertained.” He sank to his knees, right between John’s. “You’re jealous.”  
  
John could feel his breath speed up, but did nothing to stop it. He hadn’t let himself see it before, but he was afraid. After the talk with Greg, after that kiss...for a wild moment, John tasted copper. This would end badly. Oh, God, this was going to end badly.  
  
But when had that ever stopped John before? He brushed his fingers across Sherlock’s lips, which were now smiling grimly, and then cupped Sherlock’s cheek in his hand. The skin felt hot, feverish: not entirely healthy. Once again, Sherlock had pushed too hard. When John found words, he was too tired to lie. “I’m jealous.”  
  
Sherlock’s smile morphed from grim to genuine. He gripped the hand on his face gently, and moved it down, down between John’s legs. “You shouldn’t be.” Using his own hand, he pressed John’s palm down firmly. “I propositioned you. I asked for more. From you. And you said you’d let me have it.” He let go of John’s hand and replaced it with his own. “I’m going to take it, John. Can I take it?”  
  
The clock’s hands were moving again, but at double speed. They should talk about this first. They should state their expectations, establish limits, make rules.   
  
John’s eyelids fluttered as Sherlock unzipped his trousers and pulled out his cock. He was half-hard already.   
  
They should definitely talk.   
  
Sherlock licked his hand, wrapped it around John’s cock, and pulled.  
  
Oh, no. It was too late for talk. “Yes. Uh, yes!”  

“Excellent, John.” Sherlock’s smile broadened as he worked his hand up and down. “I’m not good at waiting. Lift.” John tensed his muscles, lifting his hips off the chair, and shimmied his trousers down past his knees. He went back for his pants, but Sherlock caught his wrists. “Allow me.”  
  
Sherlock hooked his fingers under the elastic waistband of John’s pants. Instead of pulling them down, however, he stretched his own body up, up, and pressed his mouth to John’s. The angle was awkward at first, but John’s hands were free. He tilted Sherlock’s head down and to the left and kissed him. The other man tasted different than last time: like curry, and not of cigarettes at all.   
  
In an effort to bring them closer together, John tangled his fingers into Sherlock’s dark curls. They were soft when they were clean, when they weren’t caked with blood. God, but John loved Sherlock’s hair.  
  
Sherlock broke the kiss. He smirked at John, at the way he could feel John’s heart racing under his ribs. John touched two fingers to Sherlock’s carotid in response, like he’d wanted to do that day at the Praxeum. He was satisfied by what he felt there. Sherlock’s smirk was a lie, or a half-truth at best; his heart was racing just as fast as John’s.   
  
Or, perhaps, the smirk was a promise, because that was when Sherlock bent down and took John in his mouth. John sucked in a shuddering breath, head lolling back on the chair. He rested his left hand on top of Sherlock’s head and remembered just how _long_ it had been since someone had done this for him. Since before France, certainly.  
  
John watched through slitted eyes as Sherlock used one hand to stroke the bottom of his cock and his tongue to lick a ring around the head. Distantly, John noticed that Sherlock was taking care of himself with his other hand, but he felt too good to care.   
  
It really had been a while and it wasn’t long before John felt himself getting close. He tightened his grip on the soft hair and stuttered out a warning. “Sherlock, I...I...”  
  
Sherlock hummed in acknowledgement, giving one last, long suck before he pulled off. Looking John square in the eye, Sherlock brought up his other hand and twisted. That was it. John screwed his eyes shut, moaning softly as he came over Sherlock’s hands and his own jumper.  
  
Panting, limp, and spent, John pried his eyes open to watch Sherlock stroke himself over the finish line. The sun had risen further since they’d started, and a slice of golden light cut through the curtains and straight across Sherlock’s pale face. The other man scrunched his nose up as he came, right onto a piece of newspaper John hadn’t seen him move. Then he slumped forward, his cheek resting on John’s bare knee, eyes closed, face as relaxed as John had ever seen it.  
  
Sherlock, of course, took the opportunity to go for the last word. “You came on your jumper. A pity. You’ll have to throw it out.”  
  
John huffed and leaned back, using his fingers to trace circles on Sherlock’s scalp. This could end in disaster. But right now, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.   


	8. Chapter 8

BANG!  
  
Propelled by Sherlock’s heel, John’s office door crashed closed, hinges vibrating. Sherlock paid no heed to the chaos he dragged in his wake. Instead, he shook his fists triumphantly, eyes bright. “Victory is mine, victory is mine! The conclusion was foregone, given my opponent, and yet,” he paused for dramatic effect, sweeping his arms straight out and bowing deeply, “victory is mine.”  
  
John closed the patient file he’d been reviewing and laced his fingers together. He hadn’t known what to expect after yesterday’s sunrise blowjob, but this manic energy was trying his patience. They still needed to talk. “Do I want to know?”  
  
“Yes. Why wouldn’t you want to know?” Sherlock gave John an incredulous look, clearly baffled by the question, as he squeezed between John and the desk. He caught hold of John’s hands as he sat, unlacing them and placing one on each of his bony knees. “It’s Nurse Sandy, the cat woman. As you know, she’s been trying to get me banned from your ward for being, to quote the official complaint she filed this morning, a ‘public menace.’” He snorted in derision. “It took me less than five minutes to uncover hard evidence that our dear Nurse Sandy has been stealing drugs. Public menace, indeed. Needless to say, her employment has been terminated.”    
  
“You got her sacked? Why would Sandy nick drugs?” John pushed off Sherlock’s knees, trying to put some space between the two of them.  
  
Sherlock, however, would not be put off. He followed, pulling John up out of the chair. “What does it matter! I thought you’d be pleased. She was stealing drugs, John. That’s hardly acceptable behavior. I would know.” His voice was proud, his expression smug.  
  
John only managed to take two steps back before his shoulders hit the wall. Sherlock’s words hit him at the same time. “What do you mean, _I would know_?”  
  
“I want to celebrate.” Sherlock tugged at the hem of John’s work fatigues and cocked an eyebrow, completely ignoring what John had just said. “And you are quite conveniently located.” He leaned in to nuzzle John’s neck and pressed a kiss there. “You smell phenomenal.”  
  
John gathered his wits. He’d caved to Sherlock’s advances yesterday, but that was yesterday. “Stop.”  
  
Sherlock kissed the corner of John’s mouth and slid his hand up John’s back. “Why?” His voice was nothing but bass. From that close, John felt the question more than he heard it.  
  
“Because I’m on duty, because anyone could walk in, and, most importantly, because I say so.” John was a head shorter than Sherlock, true, but years in the King’s armed forces had taught him how to issue a command. “Stop. I mean it.”  
  
Sherlock froze. He drew back, bemused. “You’re uncomfortable with this.” His brow furrowed as he studied John’s face. “You want to negotiate the parameters of our relationship.”  
  
John placed a hand on the center of Sherlock’s chest and pushed. Sherlock rocked back, going with the motion. “Brilliant deduction. I only said that a hundred times last night.” He cleared his throat and adjusted his shirt.  
  
Sherlock was an arm’s length away now; he seemed to deflate slightly under the force of John’s unwavering denial, but he still managed to look imperious as he inclined his head in begrudging assent. “Fine.” He brushed invisible lint off his impeccably tailored suit – John loved those suits, he really did, and Sherlock had dozens – and crossed stiffly to the door. “Tonight, then. We’ll…talk.” He yanked the door open and left, only to swing the door open a second later and stick his head back inside, the manic energy back on his face. “And John?” He waited until John looked up. “You have absolutely no idea how badly I wanted you to fuck me over your desk.” Then, with a wink and a grin, Sherlock withdrew.  
  
Laughing helplessly, John let his head fall back against the wall.  
  
For the rest of his shift, John felt like he was moving through molasses. Everywhere he turned, his coworkers were gossiping about Sandy. No one knew how she’d been found out, except for John.  
  
True to his word, Sherlock was there when John got home; he was bent over the kitchen table, peering through his microscope and taking notes on whatever experiment he was running. Neither of them spoke. John peeled off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack. Sherlock twisted a knob on the microscope. John set his keys on the table. Sherlock made a notation on his paper.  
  
Finally, John shook his head and went for a shower. When he finished, he came back into the kitchen, gathered his courage, and decided to go first. “So…what are we doing here?”      
  
Sherlock made one more inscription in his notebook, his pen moving deliberately. Then he moved his microscope to the side, his face serious. When he opened his mouth, it was as if a dam broke, allowing the words to come flooding out. “You’re a distraction. Ever since we went after Adler, I’ve found that I can’t focus my thoughts properly when you’re in close proximity. Or when you’re not in close proximity, for that matter. How else could I have missed Victor? And I can’t have any distractions, if I’m to take on Moriarty. Hence, my desire to add a physical dimension to our partnership. I believe that will help me…focus.”  
  
John blinked at the onslaught of words. Had Sherlock rehearsed that speech? “Wouldn’t sex be a greater distraction?”  
  
Sherlock shook his head. “Not a greater distraction, no. I have thought about this extensively. I have traced every outcome to its inevitable conclusion. I believe that, in our situation, the only thing worse than having sex would be abstinence.”  
  
Unlike the previous morning, tonight the curtains were wide open. It was not sunlight, but streetlight that flooded the flat now. John licked his lips, noticing the careful way Sherlock’s violin was leaned against the window. He must have been playing earlier. Sherlock loved to play his violin; that was one of the reasons John loved to hear him play it. Glimpses of Sherlock’s true self were exceedingly rare.  
  
John immediately regretted licking his lips. Now they were dry. He looked at Sherlock. “What you’re telling me is you want to be mates who have sex.”  
  
“Mates.” Sherlock voice sounded hesitant, a touch flat. “Yes, I suppose that is what I’m saying, as long as you insist on definitions. This is a short-term arrangement, you understand. It dissolves when you leave me.”  
  
“What?” Why would John leave him?  
  
“When you’re deployed, John. Keep up.”  
  
“Oh.” John looked at the violin again, not meeting Sherlock’s gaze. “Greg talked to me the night he saw us in the alley. He told me that you never stayed with the same person very long. That you couldn’t help it. Are you sure you want to commit to four months?”  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes so dramatically that John thought they might roll out of his head. “Lestrade, really? His idiocy knows no bounds. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want it.”  
  
“Oh.” John drummed his fingers on the table. “What happens after I get back? From the Colonies, I mean.”  
  
“We go back to the way we were before.” Sherlock’s eyes narrowed when John continued to stare at the violin. “I understand this isn’t what you’re used to, but I don’t have anything else to give. And, to be honest, this is a stretch for me. If this were anyone but you, I wouldn’t even…John, look at me.”  
  
John turned reluctantly. As his eyes swept the kitchen, he noticed that Sherlock had cleaned – the Petri dishes of mould that had overtaken the counter were gone, as were the bowls of ominously colored liquid that had been sitting near the sink. He could actually smell the lemon fresh scent of cleaning solution. Sherlock was nervous. John snuck another quick glance at the violin.  
  
That’s when John thought: _I love him_.  
  
This wasn’t going to be enough, this arrangement. He’d known it when Sherlock had knelt in front of him yesterday and he knew it now. If this was all he was going to get, however, he would take it, and he would thank his lucky stars Sherlock wanted anything at all. Sure, it would hurt in the end. That was okay, if he could feel like this: he’d felt the same way as he ran toward the transport on Echo beach. This was what Mycroft had recognized in him.  
  
“I agree.”  
  
It was Sherlock’s turn to blink. “Really?”

  
“Yes. Friends, sex, friends. I can do that.” Once John decided, his uncertainty vanished. He stood and held out his hand. “I’d like to start now, if that’s alright with you.”  
  
Sherlock looked at John’s hand, then at John’s face, then back at the hand. His mouth fell open slightly. Finally, he stood and took John’s hand. “That would be agreeable.” He led John to the bedroom.  
  
They stood close to each other as they took off their clothes. After they’d both stripped down to bare skin, they looked at each other. Enough light drifted in from the window to make Sherlock’s skin glow. He was magnificent, he really was. “You’re magnificent.”  
  
Sherlock ran his hand up and down John’s forearm. “You have goose flesh.” The room was uncomfortably cold; Sherlock kept the window open, even after the weather turned. “Come on.” Sherlock tugged on John’s arm, pulling him onto the bed and under the blankets.  
  
Lying on his side, John brought Sherlock’s face close and kissed him. As they heated up, he let his hands roam, stroking the smooth skin of Sherlock’s side and ghosting them across his flat stomach. When that stopped being enough, he rolled on top of Sherlock, using his elbows to support most of his weight. Sherlock’s face and chest were flushed beneath him. His full lips were swollen and wet, and his hair had puffed massively where John had been running his hands through it. He was gorgeous. “You’re gorgeous.”  
  
Sherlock smiled fondly and shook his head. “Are you just saying whatever comes into your head?”  
  
John kissed Sherlock’s forehead and considered. That was what he was doing, yes. “Yes.” Sherlock laughed with his whole body, and John felt it with his whole body. He leaned up to whisper in Sherlock’s ear. “I want to do for you what you did for me yesterday.”  
  
John ducked under the blanket and kissed his way past Sherlock’s navel. When he arrived at his destination, he paused. He’d done this before, when he was a student at the Praxeum, but it had been years. He glanced up and saw Sherlock, who was holding the blanket up between his thumbs and index fingers, peering back at him, a bit dazed. That decided it. John grabbed Sherlock and took him in his mouth gently.  
  
John found his rhythm quickly, using Sherlock’s moans as his guide. It was most satisfying when, after John licked a line just under the head of Sherlock’s cock, the other man gave a strangled cry, his body going completely rigid. John smiled and did it again. Sherlock managed a coherent sentence this time. “Ah, John, have mercy. Fuck me already.”  
  
John looked up, letting Sherlock slip from his mouth. “Are you sure?”  
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but not unkindly. “Yes, idiot.” He twisted, stretching towards the side of the bed. There was a sound of a drawer opening and closing, and then Sherlock was back, pushing a bottle of lube and a condom down into nest of blankets. “You know what to do, I assume.”  
  
“Er, uh, yes. I’ll go slow.” Sherlock nodded.  
  
He opened the bottle and squirted some of the thick gel into his hand. It was cold. John was proud he had the presence of mind to grab a tendril of Aura and use the small bit of power to excite the molecules in the lube, warming it before he spread it across his fingers. That was a little trick from his student days as well.  
  
Sherlock’s voice drifted down from above. “What are you waiting for?”  
  
John answered by pressing his right hand flat on Sherlock’s stomach. “Patience.” Then he pushed one finger inside Sherlock, so slowly it hurt.  
  
Sherlock grunted, but relaxed quickly. John pushed his finger in and out, steady, then added another finger, and another, pushing down with his other hand all the while. Sherlock writhed beneath him, panting. Both of them were covered in sweat now; the air under the blanket felt like a nova compared to the cold air outside.  
  
Finally, they were ready. John rolled the condom on his own straining cock and pulled the blanket down so he could see Sherlock’s face. He looked a bit lost and desperate, and his voice sounded the same. “Please, John.”  
  
Biting his lower lip, John pushed into Sherlock. He groaned as Sherlock rippled around him. Finally, this was happening. Four months. He would get this for four months. Friends and sex.  
  
It wasn’t enough.  
  
It would have to be enough.  
  
He began moving in earnest, whispering to Sherlock under his breath -  _You’re beautiful, amazing, brilliant. You feel so good, so hot, so good_.  
  
Sherlock looked surprised, at first, when he understood what John was saying. Then he closed his eyes and tipped his head back, looking for all the world as if no one had ever said those things to him before. John frowned, just for a moment, and smoothed his hand over Sherlock’s stomach. If he ever saw Victor again, he would kill him.  
  
John came before Sherlock did, shuddering through it. He pulled out and took off the condom, tying it off and tossing it on the floor near the rubbish bin. Feeling selfish, John rolled to the side, and, half draped over Sherlock’s body, stroked him until he came with a heartfelt groan.  
  
After his higher-order brain functions returned, John slid off Sherlock, then off the bed. There was no room for post-coital cuddling in their arrangement. His muscles felt sore, and the sweat on his body was drying in the cold air, making him shiver. While picking up his clothes, he looked over his shoulder. Sherlock was sitting up, dabbing the come off his stomach with a sock. He met John’s eyes, hesitated, and spoke. “I…thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome.” John walked out of the bedroom, still naked, and padded up the stairs. He collapsed onto his own bed, exhausted. His last thought as sleep claimed him was that he’d never heard Sherlock thank someone before.  
  
When he woke up, it was to the hum of a violin playing downstairs.


	9. Chapter 9

Things were, for the most part, good.  
  
On a rainy afternoon in early November, John dragged Sherlock to a furniture shop to buy a new armchair. Sherlock, true to form, complained non-stop. “Why do I have to be here?”  
  
“Because you’re the one who set fire to my armchair. I liked that armchair.”  
  
“That was an accident!”  
  
“Tell that to the chair.”  
  
Then John spotted it: the chair was overstuffed and brown, with a high back and a lumpy cushion. It stood just across the aisle, practically begging for someone to sit and open a newspaper. John sank into the padding and closed his eyes. It wasn’t flashy or modern, but he felt safe in that chair. He felt comfortable. He felt swaddled like a newborn babe. It was bliss.  
  
“Sherlock.”  
  
Sherlock looked up from his phone to where John sat in the chair. He took in the thin fabric, the faded front, and the scuffed feet. “It’s monstrous.”  
  
“Sherlock.”  
  
“Absolutely not. I said I’d buy a new chair, not a bedbug infestation.”  
  
“…Sherlock.” John melted further into the warm embrace of the armchair and smiled lazily. “This is the one.”  
  
Sherlock studied John for a long moment. He opened his mouth like he was going to continue arguing, then closed it with an audible snap. “I suppose it does fit with the décor.” He stalked toward the register, already pulling his card from his back pocket.  
  
Three weeks later, John was lounging in his new armchair and listening to Sherlock play his violin. Sherlock had his cotton pyjama bottoms on, but he’d neglected to wear a shirt, leaving John with an unencumbered view of his long, lean torso. Watching the muscles of Sherlock’s back flex and shift as he moved was one of John’s new favorite pastimes.  
  
Unfortunately, that night’s violin playing wasn’t as pleasant as the view. Discordant notes tangled together and fell to the floor like rocks, building up gradually until they covered most of the room. Eventually, and with a final ear splitting shriek of bow against string, Sherlock let his hands fall to his sides.  
  
“Are you going to stare all night?”  
  
John picked up a piece of paper from his side table and started shredding it absentmindedly. He knew Sherlock wasn’t angry at him. “What’s going on?”  
  
Sherlock rested his forehead against the cool window and looked down at Baker Street. His breath fogged the glass white. “Moriarty. I can’t figure him out. We know he’s from Ireland, but why did he leave? He went to Poland, enacted a coup d’état, and started his Empire, but where does his irrational hatred of Adepts come from? He’s everywhere, he’s in everything, he’s watching me - watching us - and _I can’t figure him out_.”  
  
John finished shredding the piece of paper and set it aside. “You will. I know you will.” He spoke with complete confidence; he had yet to see Sherlock fail at anything related to detective work, and he didn’t think Sherlock was going to start now. Besides, Sherlock spent most of his waking hours poring over the details of Moriarty’s life; it was only a matter of time before he found the tyrant’s weakness.  
  
Sherlock turned away from the window and brought his violin back up to his shoulder. He started playing again, but this time, there were no discordant notes. This time, his song was full and warm, expanding to resonate in every corner of the room.  
  
John tilted his head, surprised by the change in tone. “What’s this?”  
  
“It’s Kreisler.”  
  
“I’ve never heard you play this before.”  
  
Sherlock strolled to where John was sitting. “I’ve never tried to seduce you with my violin before.”  
  
John’s eyebrows climbed into his hair. “Ah.” They climbed even higher when Sherlock straddled him on the chair. “So this Kreisler bloke, was he a romantic?”  
  
“Shut up, John.” Sherlock kissed him hard, grinding down with his hips.  
  
John drew back, laugh lines appearing at the corners of his eyes. “Not complaining about the chair now, are we?”  
  
“Shut up, John!”  
  
Then John blinked and it was Christmas. Greg had come round for drinks earlier – Sherlock had needed very little convincing before he agreed to the company, which John put down to Sherlock’s high tolerance for Christmas-related activities in general – and now it was time for the best part of the evening: the gifts.  
  
John accepted his present from Sherlock and shook it vigorously; that was no mean feat considering the newspaper wrapped bundle was larger than his head and he had very little leverage while sitting. “Hmmmm.” John shook the present once more, for good measure. “It’s a toaster.”  
  
Sherlock grabbed his own gift off the mantel and sat on the sofa, crossing his legs. He smiled, clearly enjoying himself. “Wrong. Not a bad hypothesis, but wrong.”  
  
John tore into the wrapping, flinging it in all directions. When he saw what Sherlock had given him, he laughed with delight. “A footstool!” He plunked it in front of his chair and leaned back, putting up his heels. “And look. It matches.”  
  
“Of course it matches.”  
  
“So you’ve accepted the armchair!”  
  
Sherlock crossed his arms across his chest. “I’ve grown…used to…the thing, yes. Although you should know, my reasons for the footstool weren’t entirely selfless.”  
  
John snorted loudly at that, which Sherlock ignored. “Okay, then. Other than my comfort, what reason did you have?”  
  
Sherlock uncrossed his arms and legs and leaned forward. “My trousers, John. I’ve worn the knees out of _three pair_  kneeling in front of that chair of yours, and I can’t just replace them at the charity shop, like you. But now that there’s a stool...”  
  
John laughed again, the sound coming from deep in his belly. “That still sounds like a present for me. Thank you, Sherlock. I love it.” He nodded. “Open yours.”  
  
Unlike John, Sherlock opened his gift carefully, peeling the tape away gently and folding the paper. It was a book, a thick one. Sherlock turned it over in his hands, then stroked the front cover and read the title. “ _The Evolution of Influenza_.”  
  
“Yeah.” John scratched behind his ear, feeling self-conscious. Nudging the footstool to the side, he went to sit beside Sherlock on the sofa. “It seemed like something you’d be interested in. And I understand medicine and disease, so I’ll be able to talk to you about it. If you want to read it.”  
  
“Why wouldn’t I read it?” The expression on Sherlock’s face was difficult to decipher. On the one hand, he seemed pleased, but on the other, he looked a little pained. “Knowledge of influenza would be immensely practical.” He smiled then, his face clearing. “But first I’d like to gather data on the footstool: quality of construction, comfort level of the cushioning, that sort of thing. I do like to be thorough, you know.” Sherlock leered at John, actually leered.  
  
“And what will my role be, in this data gathering?”  
  
“You can take off that damned jumper, for starters. Reindeer and sequins? Where do you find these things?” Sherlock dropped the book and shoved John toward the chair, already tugging the jumper off.  
  
A few hours later, John was alone in Sherlock’s bed. He hadn’t been alone for long; Sherlock had only popped out to clean himself up - dried come itched like fury. In his absence, John was debating whether he should try to find his pants before he went back to his room or look for them in the morning.  
  
Before he could decide, Sherlock came back. The other man had put on his dressing gown when he’d left the bed – his only concession to winter – but he slipped out of it as he climbed in beside John. In his hand was the flu book.  
  
John eyed the book warily, unsure if he was about to be mocked. Why else would Sherlock bring the book to bed, of all places? “I’ll just…yeah, I’ll go.” He’d look for his pants in the morning.  
  
Sherlock’s hand lassoed John’s wrist, holding him in place. “I want to read this.”  
  
“Oh. That’s great.”  
  
“No. I want to read it now and I want you here when I do.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
“I might come across an obscure medical concept that you can clarify.”  
  
“Sherlock.”  
  
Instead of replying, Sherlock pulled John toward him, positioning him between his legs so John’s back was resting against the warm muscles of Sherlock’s chest. Then he reached his arms around John’s body and rested his chin on John’s shoulder, leaving the book open on John’s lap. He started to read quietly: “The acidic conditions in the endosome cause two events to happen. First, part of the hemagglutinin protein fuses the viral envelope with the vacuole's membrane…”  
  
John only interrupted him once, halfway down the first page. He turned his head to the side and kissed Sherlock’s temple. “Happy Christmas.” Sherlock kissed his hair in return and kept reading.    
  
By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, John was in high spirits. The arrangement with Sherlock was torturous, to be sure, but not that bad, all things considered. Sure, they’d only slept in the same bed once, on Christmas. And, yes, Sherlock was becoming more obsessed with Moriarty each passing second. And, okay, John only had six weeks before he shipped off to a war where he could be killed or Collared any moment.  
  
But other than that, things weren’t too bad. John had even convinced Sherlock to meet him for dinner at Angelo’s after his shift at the Praxeum; New Year’s Eve was wild in London, even with the war on, but Angelo’s was small enough and far enough out of the way that they shouldn’t be bothered.  
  
He arrived at the restaurant around eight. Angelo himself greeted him when he walked through the door, ushering him to Sherlock’s favorite table, the one right in front of the window.  
  
Angelo winked at John as he sat down. “Finally got Mr. Holmes to agree to a date, huh? Good for you.”  
  
John shook his head. “Not a date. We’re not together.”  
  
Angelo tapped the side of his nose and set a candle down on the table at the same time. “Look around you, lad.” Candlelight flickered across the walls, lengthening the shadows on the ceiling.  “This is a date. I’ll bring your usuals, on the house, to celebrate. To the new year!” Angelo tipped a glass of water in John’s direction, downed it, and left for the kitchen.  
  
John looked around. Who was he kidding? Of course tonight wasn’t just any other night. He and Sherlock had been riding a fine line for weeks now. And Sherlock had agreed to come, knowing full well what night it was. He’d been so strange lately. John let his finger trail around the rim of his glass as he remembered Sherlock resting his head against John’s, reading to him about the flu.  
  
It was useless to speculate if Sherlock had changed his mind. Best to wait, and ask him directly. John settled in.  
  
Fifteen minutes went by. John’s leg bounced under the table, knocking against the wood every couple of seconds and making the candle flicker furiously. Ten more minutes passed. John checked his phone. Nothing. Sherlock was late. While annoying, it wasn’t unexpected.  
  
Angelo came with their food, glancing askance at the empty seat across from John. He pursed his lips in disapproval. “That one is thicker than rocks, innit he? Not to worry, he’ll turn up.”  
  
But he didn’t turn up. The food got cold. Other patrons came, ate, and left. But Sherlock didn’t show. John sent nine texts and called twice. No answer.  
  
The longer he waited, the more worried John became. What if something had happened? Sherlock was involved in a high stakes intelligence operation. He’d attracted the attention of Moriarty himself. What if he was hurt? Lying in an alley somewhere, dying?  
  
John talked himself into waiting an hour and half before he snatched his jacket off the back of his chair and bolted. Waving down a taxi was murder, but he finally made it back to Baker Street. If Sherlock wasn’t there, he was dragging every last agent at New Scotland Yard out into the streets.       
  
John flung open the door to 221B.  
  
The first thing he saw was Sherlock, lying on the sofa in his pyjamas, perfectly fine.  
  
“You’re alive!” John spluttered, relieved beyond measure.  
  
Sherlock didn’t move his head to look at John, just his eyes. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”  
  
“You didn’t show up to dinner. I dunno, I thought…I thought maybe something happened.”  
  
“Oh, yes. It slipped my mind.”  
  
John walked into the flat, feet heavy on the old rug. “Slipped your…why didn’t you answer your phone? I sent you a load of texts. Sherlock, I called you. You know that means it’s important. I thought you were in trouble.”  
  
Sherlock let one hand flop over the side of the sofa, gesturing vaguely at the kitchen table. “Because my phone’s way over there. Fetch it for me, would you?” He sounded bored. Bored.  
  
John pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw white light. He’d got so worked up! Not just when he thought Sherlock was in danger either, but before that, when he thought Sherlock agreeing to the dinner had been some sort of sign. God, he was stupid. “ _FETCH_ it?”  
  
Sherlock shifted and sat up. “Why are you so upset? I’ve forgotten before.”  
  
“Not in the last month, you haven’t!” John balled his hands into fists, thrusting them down at his sides. Only one light was on in the flat, a lamp next to the couch, and it wasn’t enough. The edges of John’s vision were shrouded in darkness.  
  
“Oh.” Sherlock’s eyes widened, then narrowed, quicksilver in the dimness. “Then it’s for the best I stayed in. We have an agreement, John. I expect you to abide by it.” His voice was acid, disintegrating everything it touched.  
  
John was shaking now. “Why should I _abide_? Why should I, when you don’t!”  He leveled a finger at Sherlock. “Let’s review the evidence, shall we? The armchair. The weird looks. The _fucking_ cuddling! Sex aside, I don’t have any mates who act like that. And now this? What the fuck is this? I know tonight didn’t _slip your mind_ ; you would have remembered when I called, if nothing else.” He took a deep breath. “The inevitable conclusion: you stood me up, on purpose. Because you’re the one who’s been breaking the agreement, and when you realized what it would mean if you met me tonight, you panicked.”  
  
Sherlock looked at the floor. John ran a hand through his short hair. He didn’t know if what he was saying was correct, or wishful thinking. “This is killing me. What we’re doing right now is killing me.”  
  
Sherlock’s reply was harsh in the space between them. “Then why are you doing it?”  
  
John threw up his hands, helpless. “Because I love you! God knows why.”  
  
Sherlock recoiled, as if he’d been slapped. Without bothering to put on proper clothes - or look at John, for that matter - Sherlock jammed his feet into a pair of trainers by the door, whipped his coat off the rack, and slammed the door behind him as he left.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of Act II.

The sound of the door closing roused John from his fitful sleep. He took one look at Sherlock and reached for the Aura; the man had returned with a wicked black eye. “What the hell happened?”  
  
Sherlock followed John into the kitchen and accepted an ice pack. “I..” He shook his head. He looked wrecked and unsure, completely unlike himself. “John, I...you were right. About everything. I lost control.” The ice pack fell to the table. “This can’t happen.”  
  
He stared at John plaintively. His eye was no longer swollen shut, thanks to John’s work with his capillaries. This was as honest as he’d ever been. “I can’t give you more. I wanted to, though. I’ve been running an experiment for the last month, to see if I could. It’s...gratifying...to see you noticed.” His hand spasmed around the ice pack. “But it failed. Last night I failed, and I don’t know _why_. Something is wrong with me.”  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” John planted himself in front of Sherlock, righteous sincerity ringing from every word. “You made one mistake. And because of that, you’re chucking out everything? You are a human, Sherlock, as much as you pretend to the contrary.”  
  
“That’s the problem.” Anguish painted Sherlock’s features. “You have such faith in me. You shouldn’t.”    
  
“I know you’ve been happy.”  
  
“Do you know what you’re asking?”  
  
John brushed his finger across Sherlock’s brow, clearing away exploded cells and flushing out some of the waste. “I want to try, and I’m asking you to try. If it’s not working, either of us can back out at any time. It can work, if we’re honest.”  
  
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know where I went last night.”  
  
“I’m an adult. And it doesn’t matter. You came back.”  
  
Sherlock batted John’s hand away, hissing. “It does matter! Why do you refuse to see what’s directly in front of you? Greg’s warned you, as has Mycroft, I’m sure. We all see what’s coming; good intentions are never enough! If we start this for real, I will hurt you. Mark my words, John, you will regret this.”  
  
Well, that was a terrifying speech. John made a half-hearted attempt at a smile. “You realize that makes me want it more?”  
  
Laughing with no humour whatsoever, Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Extraordinary.”  
  
“Then you’ll try? Six weeks, that’s all. A trial run, to prove we can handle it. We’ll pick it up again after my deployment.” For a weak moment, John wished he could do what Mycroft could do: look into Sherlock’s mind, just to see what happened in there. “What’s the worst you could do in six weeks?”  
  
Sherlock stood, leaving the ice pack on the table. “We can’t stay here, we can’t go back.” He sighed, resignation weighing down his shoulders. “If I want to take anything, I have to take everything.” He squeezed John’s hand. “Fine.”  
  
“That’s the spirit.” John took Sherlock’s face in his hands and kissed him softly. “Thank you. And for the record, I think you’re wrong. You’re brilliant, but you’re wrong about this.”  
  
Sherlock closed his eyes. When he finally spoke, John could feel his lips move. “I have one condition...don’t say it again. Please. Maybe, after you get back from the Colonies. Maybe then.”  
  
“Okay.” John breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. “Okay.”  
  
The next two weeks passed much like the previous months. The main difference was they slept together now, in the same bed, every night. Or, they didn’t sleep, as the case may be.  
  
“Oh, God.” Sherlock’s curls hung loose over his face, dark with sweat, as he straddled John, riding him. Both his hands pressed down on John’s chest, making it even harder to breathe than it usually was when they had sex. John resisted the urge to screw his eyes closed, focusing on the way his cock disappeared into Sherlock instead.  
  
Sherlock was moving quickly, up and down. Too quickly, John realized after a moment; if they didn’t slow down, this was going to be over soon. Hoping to rectify the situation, John put his hands on Sherlock’s thighs, kneading them until Sherlock looked him in the eye. Then John reached up and drew Sherlock down until they were chest to chest.  
  
“Relax.” John massaged the back of Sherlock’s neck with one hand and stroked his hip with the other. “Slow down. That’s it.” Sherlock made a sound close to a whimper and buried his face in John’s neck. John took over the pace from Sherlock, rubbing soothing circles into the other man’s back as he fucked in and out of him, slowly. “Relax.”  
  
Eventually, John felt the tension in Sherlock’s body lessen. “There you go.” John thrust up a few more times. “You’re beautiful. You’re so beautiful.”  
  
Sherlock propped himself up on his elbows then, and gazed down at John. “You’re beautiful too. Your eyes...” He kissed each of John’s eyelids. “Your mouth...” He bit down on John’s lip, tugging it. “You have the perfect mouth.”  
  
John grunted in response, tensing his arms around Sherlock and flipping them both over. He’d had enough of slow. He grabbed hold of Sherlock and jacked him off, pounding into him at the same time.  
  
Like buffalo over a cliff, they fell together.   
  
Then, lying next to Sherlock, tired and happy and mentally incapacitated, John forgot himself. Without conscious thought, he did the one thing Sherlock had asked him not to do. He said it. “That was amazing, Sherlock. I love you, I love you.”  
  
Sherlock stiffened. It took John a moment to realize his mistake. He jerked up to a sitting position, sudden anxiety flooding his system. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry.”  
  
Sherlock responded by rolling onto his side, turning his back on John. “Go to sleep.”  
  
“I’m sorry, I really am-”  
  
“Go to sleep.” John reached half-way to Sherlock’s back, even more tense now then it was before, then pulled back. He laid down reluctantly, but said nothing.  
  
Things were harder after that. John berated himself over and over for his stupidity. Two weeks! Two sodding weeks, and he’d already disrupted their delicate balance. At least Sherlock didn’t leave, although he was more distant and spent more time at the Yard. John let him have his space, and, in the meantime, tried to show Sherlock he was worth loving.  
  
One morning, just ten days before he was set to leave, John was sitting next to Sherlock in a cafe, sipping a triple-shot. Sherlock was on his laptop, flipping through spreadsheets of Empire assets. Every so often, Sherlock’s elbow would bump John’s, and John would let himself hope they would make it. Ten more days, to prove it could be done. Then his deployment, to get their heads on straight. After that, all the time in the world.  
  
They sat in silence, but it wasn’t unpleasant. After a while, John noticed Sherlock’s hand resting on the table. It was just sitting there, doing nothing. Not one to waste a golden opportunity, he laced his fingers through Sherlock’s and squeezed.  
  
Sherlock’s eyes jerked to their entwined hands, then to John’s face. John felt compelled to say something. “I saw your hand and felt an overwhelming desire to hold it. Then it occurred to me: I can hold it if I want. So I did.”  
  
Sherlock didn’t seem happy, but he also didn’t pull his hand away. John took that as a good sign. There was, however, something in his pale eyes, something John caught the smallest glimmer of before Sherlock turned back to his computer. Had that been guilt?  
  
Deployment day approached with alarming speed. It was only two days away now, but John was feeling confident. They’d made it. He knew Sherlock had been wrong. Greg had been wrong too. Sherlock had just needed someone to believe in him, someone to be in his corner no matter what. He was difficult, so difficult, but the passion underneath that cold, uncaring exterior was exquisite. John regretted nothing. The deployment would be long, but if there was a work-around, they would find it.     
  
Sherlock was at the Yard again that night, or the morgue maybe, and John was at the flat, deciding if he wanted anything put in storage while he was away. He definitely wanted to put his clothes out of Sherlock’s reach - the man would likely burn them the first chance he got.  
  
Consumed with his preparations, John didn’t hear his text alarm go off right away. He’d left his mobile in the other room, on the table next to his armchair. He didn’t check his messages until a few minutes later, when he broke for tea.  
  
There was only one text, from an unknown number. John opened it anyway; Sherlock nicked other people’s phones all the time and used them to text.   
  
But the text wasn’t from Sherlock. It was from James Moriarty.  
  
 _It is my distinct pleasure to be the first to say it: Told you so :p. Happy deployment!  - xoxo JM_  
  
The text had an attachment: a dark, grainy photo, no doubt taken with someone’s mobile. Despite the low quality, Sherlock was easily identifiable, his skin stark white against the brick wall behind him. Also visible was the back of another man’s head. The stranger was kneeling in front of Sherlock, his hands on Sherlock’s hips. It was painfully clear what was happening.  
  
John’s immediate reaction was that this was a trick. A hoax. Projectionists could swap faces, as they’d learned with Cyrus. Photos could be manipulated. This text could be from anyone.    
  
Zooming in with a swipe, John squinted at Sherlock. It had to be a fake. It had to be coincidence that the Sherlock in the picture was wearing the same shirt his Sherlock had left in this morning. Where had Sherlock said he was going? The Yard? Or was it the morgue?  
  
It couldn’t be coincidence that Sherlock flapped through the door at exactly that moment, his coat flaring behind him. John stared blankly at the man. The timing was suspicious; the text had arrived exactly five minutes before Sherlock. Almost like the person who sent it knew where Sherlock was. Shit.  
  
“What?” Sherlock raised an eyebrow, unwinding his scarf from his neck. “Are you planning on hiding your jumpers when you go? You know I’ll find them.” He turned around.  
  
“You have dirt on the back of your coat.”  
  
Sherlock swung his coat off and fingered a patch of ground-in dirt on the left shoulder. “Ah...yes.”  
  
John looked at the way the Sherlock in the picture was pressed up against a dirty wall. “How’d that happen?”  
  
“I don’t know. You can hardly expect me to keep track of everything I touch.”  
  
“I can’t?” John kept his voice carefully controlled, unwilling to react until Sherlock either confirmed or denied.  
  
The forced lightness in his tone did not go unnoticed. Sherlock tilted his head curiously.  He was rubbing the patch of dirt, deducing. “There’s something wrong. Your deployment? You don’t want to leave?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Then it’s me.” He stepped closer to John, his eyes burrowing into John’s brain. “Ah! It is. But what? You were holding your phone when I came in, you’re still holding it. And you asked about my coat like it was important...” Sherlock trailed off. Suddenly apprehensive, his eyes tracked down to the dirt. “What’s on your phone, John?”  
  
“See for yourself.” He tossed the phone in a long, slow arc. Sherlock snatched it out of the air with his free hand and looked.  
  
His jaw tightened. He used his thumb to scroll to the original message. “Moriarty.” He thumbed back to the picture. Then his face contorted with rage. “ _MORIARTY_.” In an explosion of long limbs, Sherlock hurled the phone at the wall. It shattered, just like Greg’s had shattered. The outburst was almost a relief; at least it was real.  
  
“It’s true.”  
  
“...yes.”   
  
“That was taken tonight, wasn’t it.”  
  
“...yes.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
Sherlock hesitated.  
  
“ _How long_?”  
  
“A month.”  
  
“Ah.” John smiled ruefully, remembering where he’d been a month ago: tangled up in bed, high from amazing sex, telling Sherlock he loved him. “This is my fault then.”  
  
“No.” Sherlock’s voice was emphatic. “I won’t allow you to blame-”  
  
“I feel like such a fool.” John spoke right over Sherlock, calmly. “How did I manage to convince myself this could end any other way?” He met Sherlock’s eyes and grimaced. “Right..New Year’s Eve. The black eye. You did this then too, didn’t you?”  
  
Sherlock’s eyes darted this way and that, searching for...something. A way out? “Yes.”  
  
“You told me. You told me exactly what would happen, and I forced you to be with me anyway.”  
  
“John-”  
  
“Could you not talk, for once in your life?” John held up his hands, palms out. “This was all my delusion. That I would be enough to...to what? _Change_ you?” He started talking faster. No one could blame him for getting a little hysterical. “In fact, Sherlock, I think you have the right idea! We say things like I love you forever, but that’s absurd. That’s how children talk. I realize now that I’ve mortgaged my reality to myself at nine years old! In the actual world, we love each other and we want each other, but then the other person does something we don’t like - like leaving socks on the floor, or, I don’t know, saying ‘I love you’ - and we’re gone. It’s no one’s fault, when you think about it.”   
  
Sherlock was looking desperate now, and horrified. “John, stop! I don’t know why...I can’t give you a reason. I lied because I thought, if I can’t stop, at least I can save you the pain. Once you were gone, I’d have time to think! You wanted this so badly, and I didn’t want you to leave...I’m sorry.”  
  
John caught his top lip between his teeth. He wanted to stick a pin through Sherlock, straight down into the floor. He wanted all of his attention, but he felt so tired. “You don’t know why? We’re ashamed when we’re weak, Sherlock. And we’re embarrassed by emotion when it threatens our control. So we try to find other words for it, play the other side against it, leverage armies against our need, because need makes us weak. To give up the self is to betray the self, right?”  
  
“You’re talking nonsense.”  
  
John looked around 221B. He’d been happy here. This hurt so much worse than he’d thought it would. “Mostly, I’m angry at myself. But I’m angry at you, too. Furious, Sherlock, do you understand that?” He walked closer and took the coat Sherlock still held in his hand, and rubbed the patch of dirt. “I asked you to try. That’s it. When it got to be too much, all you had to do was be honest. Maybe then we’d have something to salvage.” He dropped the coat to floor, shaking his head. “You know, this is exactly what Moriarty wanted when he sent that text. Who knows why. You should look into that, it might be important.”  
  
Then John took Sherlock’s face in his hands and kissed him gently. Before he pulled his hands away, he let his fingers brush against Sherlock’s pulsing carotid. He would miss that. He grabbed the overnight bag he usually left by the door in case he got called in to Barts last minute. “I’ll have Greg collect my things later.”   
  
Sherlock’s mouth dropped open. “Wait...wait! Is this it?” Emotion clouded his words so intensely that John could barely recognize his voice.  
  
A fire lit itself in his heart, eating the oxygen out of his lungs. “Why? Do you want to be friends?” John hadn’t meant for that to sound mocking, but it did.  
  
The other man flinched. “No, it’s...please, John, _please_ be careful. You’ll be a target. I can let you go now, like this, but I won’t allow you to die. That’s...” He drew a shuddering breath, squeezing his eyes closed. “...beyond comprehension.” He opened his eyes again; they were shining, reflecting random glints of light around the flat. If he cried, John would never forgive him. “If I deem it necessary to intercede for your protection, I will. You’ll not convince me otherwise.”  
  
John opened the door, teeth gritted. “By all means, you must do as you deem necessary.” He turned away.  
  
“Wait!” John halted. Could Sherlock say it now, standing in amidst the rubble? “I want to say...that is, I want you to know...I was happy you gave me a chance. I was happy. Thank you.” Apparently not.  
  
John wished they had more time to work through this tangled mess. He loved Sherlock: brilliant, gorgeous, exciting, dangerous Sherlock. But they didn’t have any more time. It was too late. He smiled wanly and closed the door.  
  
When he finally made it to a hotel room, he bypassed the light switch and set his bag on the bed. That done, he staggered into the wall. He hadn’t wanted to do this in front of Sherlock, but now that he was alone there was nothing stopping him. One hand wrapped around his stomach and one covering his eyes, John sobbed in the dark.  
  
Two days later, surrounded by his former students from the Praxeum - now they were colleagues, fellow soldiers - John boarded the stark military plane that would carry him to war. On the faces of his fellow Adepts, he could see fear, anxiety, excitement, lust, and everything inbetween. The only thing John felt was grateful. Duty was simple.  
  
He walked up the plane’s ramp, the metal giving slightly beneath his boots. Duty was simple, and it’s easier to look ahead when you’re leaving nothing behind. He held his breath as the plane lifted off the ground. 


	11. Chapter 11

Asphalt  snapped and rippled, cracking apart with thunderous roars as earth bucked beneath concrete. Stony balls of fire rained down from the clear blue sky, exploding against buildings and superheating the already burnt air of Georgia in late summer. Lightning forked horizontally across entire streets, scorching flesh and stone alike. Gunfire pittered steadily in the background, providing an almost quaint counterpoint to the massive Aura-destruction everywhere else. The city of Augusta reeked of ozone and sulfur.  
  
In the middle of the chaos was John, crouched behind an overturned lorry. He and the unit’s three other Adepts were huddled together, planning how best to cover their retreat over the river to Carolina. They were about to lose the Georgia colony, just as they’d lost the Mississippi territory, and just as they’d lost France before that.  
  
“We need to get to the bridge on the north edge of the city.” Karl’s Scottish burr crackled through the tiny speaker embedded on the inside of John’s helmet. The young, handsome empath’s freckled face was streaked with sweat and dust, but he spoke with authority. Waves of reassurance rolled from him, calming the unit’s frayed nerves. “But we have to be quick. Command says a full unit is moving down from the north to cut us off.”  
  
“Damn. That means we have to stall the unit coming up at us from the south. We can’t hold them off and punch through the northern line.” Mallory, the unit’s projectionist, shifted from one knee to the other. She turned her blue eyes to their kinetic. “What do you think, Cam?”  
  
Cammie glanced to the south thoughtfully and swiped idly at the blood still oozing from the cut above her left eye. A few kilometers back, a fireball had crashed into the building next to their position. Shrapnel had sprayed everywhere, and a piece of it caught Cammie in the forehead; John had reacted instantly, pinching off blood vessels and slapping some plaster over the mess. Nevertheless, Cammie would always carry that scar.  
  
“It’s possible, Mal, but we’d have to combo. I can’t reach that far without a boost.” She scrubbed at her face again, blood flaking off her dark skin. “Is everyone up for this?”  
  
They all nodded. Comboing was dead useful, if uncomfortable. To combo, an empath - Karl, in this case - used their power to establish a psychic link between a small number of Adepts. The more Adepts, the stronger the empath had to be, and no empath had ever managed more than seven at once. Once the link was established, the Aura flowed through each Adept like tributaries to a larger river, combining to become a single flow. At that point, the empath could give control of the comboed power to any Adept in the link. The only downside was that combos were hard to stomach for most Adepts; when someone else drew Aura through you, it often felt like the emotional equivalent of a metal fork scraping against teeth. In the middle of a pitched battle,that distraction could mean death.  
  
John adjusted his helmet, and looked towards the north. Thank God the Collared couldn’t combo. Something about the link established between the Collared and the handler precluded links to other Adepts. It was the only reason the British forces hadn’t been completely overrun.  
  
He held up his hand, bringing the group’s attention back to him. “We’ll combo and Cam will direct. Once she starts, the unit will move up the street towards the north crossing. Karl, relay the order and set us up.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
John grabbed what Aura he could and braced himself. Karl was gentle, under the circumstances, but John still shuddered when the red-haired man took control of his power. The four of them stood and he made a series of hand gestures towards the non-Adepts in their unit. “On my mark. Cam?”  
  
Cammie aimed herself toward the enemy troops moving up from the south. They were only ten blocks away now and closing fast. She planted her feet and squared her shoulders, finding her balance on the shifting road. “Ready.”  
  
“Mark.”  
  
His unit began to race north, scrambling over fallen walls and dodging through giant chunks of concrete. The Adepts followed close behind; using the Aura, Cammie didn’t need to look to see what was behind her. John felt the amount of Aura rushing through him increase fractionally as Cammie pulled in every drop of Aura she could. Then she unleashed.  
  
The top of an office tower tore free of its moorings and drifted above the enemy forces. Fire and wind buffeted the tower top from below, but to no avail; with a grunt of effort, Cammie sent the tower top careening into the troops below. John’s bones vibrated with the force of the impact. As they neared the bridge, Cammie ripped the top from another building. This time, before she crashed the tower top into the ground, she set it on fire. The attacks coming from that direction stuttered to a stop.  
  
Victory, of course, was short-lived. As soon as the south fell into temporary silence, attacks from the north commenced in earnest. The difference was, there seemed to be more Collared in the northern unit than command had anticipated. The ferocity of the the barrage halted John’s unit in its tracks.  
  
John swayed a bit as Cammie turned her attention towards the north. Sustained periods of channeling the Aura were physically taxing, and he had no extra power to divert to his weakening muscles. He quickly took stock of their position. “Why are there so many? There has to be at least twice as many Collared as usual in that unit. Karl?”  
  
“I’m not sure. We have a powerful Adept contingent. Maybe they noticed and wanted to neutralize us?” Karl ducked as he spoke, evading a hail of bullets. “Does it matter? Even with the combo, there’s no way we’ll make it to the northern crossing. And as soon as that unit to the south picks itself up, we’ll be cut off.”  
  
John squeezed his eyes shut as a rocket hit the road in front of him. A hard wall of air and sound picked him up and threw him back, knocking the wind from his lungs and leaving him stunned. He blinked to clear spots of darkness from his line of sight. They had to get out of this. He grabbed Karl’s arm.  
  
“Break the combo and make contact with the empath at command. Tell them to move a unit to keep the southern unit pinned down while we make for the middle crossing.” John jerked back again as Karl broke the link - the Aura Cammie had been using snapped back into him like an elastic band - and helped Mallory to her feet. He turned back to Karl. “What are they saying?”  
  
“I’m waiting for an answer, sir. They have to clear the orders through the strategic consultant.” Karl’s eyes glazed over for a moment as he made contact with command’s empath. “The 117th is moving to cover us from the south. We’re to make for the middle crossing with all possible speed, and the 117th will follow. We’ll be met in Carolina by heavy ground transport.”  
  
“Brilliant.” He issued the new orders to the troops. “Cam, do what you can with what you have. Mal, help her out. Confuse them with some phantom soldiers or something. We need enough time to get to that bridge.”  
  
They began to move in the direction they’d just come from, except this time they stayed just within the cover of the buildings along the river. John cursed as two of his troops disappeared in a fireball. Another man fell, twitching and smoking, as a lightning bolt lanced through his chest. They were taking heavy casualties.  
  
Finally, they reached the crossing, the Empire’s troops close on their heels. John waved his arm toward the transports waiting on the other side, covered by a line of projectionists and kinetics. “Get over the bridge! Cam, you’re with me!” Cammie, thoroughly exhausted, nodded wearily. After taking a deep breath, she lobbed a split chunk of road into the air.  
  
The British troops crossed swiftly, covered by Adepts on both sides of the river. At last, Karl relayed the word: time for John and his Adepts to cross. John tapped Cammie’s shoulder. “Well done, Cam. Time to go.”  
  
The four of them sprinted onto the bridge, Mal in the lead and Cammie bringing up the rear. Bullets started whizzing past as the enemy drew closer.  
  
When they were halfway across, Karl stopped suddenly and turned, eyes wide. John looked where he was looking. Cammie was lying on the ground behind him, facedown. A puddle of blood was spreading out from her prostrate form, mixing with the dirt from the battle.  
  
John gripped the Aura tight and dropped next to her. He didn’t need his power to see what the problem was: she’d been shot in the neck. She was still alive, barely.  
  
“Karl, link us! I think it’ll be enough for me to keep her alive til we get to the other side.” John beckoned to Karl, willing him to hurry.  
  
Karl didn’t move. Instead, his eyes glazed, like they had when he’d contacted command. When he came back to himself, he shook his head slightly. “Sorry, sir, but no. I have orders from command. We have to leave now.”  
  
John was taken aback. “We can save her. Do the combo!” Mallory fired her rifle at the troops on the shore, too tired to project.  
  
“No, sir. That will take too long. If you try to save her, we all die.”  
  
“I won’t let her die for me!”  
  
“Cammie isn’t dying for you. She’s giving your life to you. Don’t be stupid.”  
  
“Link us! That’s an order.”  
  
Karl just stared, silent. Then, with a last pained gurgle, Cammie shuddered and died. How old had Cammie been? Twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe? She had been a wild one, and dearly loved to laugh. John looked at her empty black eyes and saw Childers. He could have saved both of them.  
  
Karl put a hand on his arm. “We need to move.” John finally nodded and resumed his sprint to the other side, leaving Cammie’s body behind. 


	12. Chapter 12

John slipped silently into the sweltering church, Mallory and Karl at his side. Nostalgia, sharp as broken glass, flooded his body at the sight of the wooden pews; his parents had dragged him to church every Sunday until he’d left for the Praxeum.  
  
Back then, his parents’ belief in a god - one God - had embarrassed him. Monotheistic religious practice was a relic from an earlier age, from the time before the Aura was understood and respected as a natural phenomenon. Modern churchgoers were often considered out-of-touch at best, willfully ignorant at worst. As he grew older, however, he became more understanding of his parents’ religion. Although he suspected their faith was based mainly in habit, there was something to be said for the comfort of ritual, the stability of tradition. For exactly that reason, John allowed himself to keep the speech patterns he’d developed in his youth, in spite of the odd looks he sometimes received; every time he uttered a _God_ or spat out a _bloody hell_ , he felt a tangible connection to his family and his past.  
  
Cammie hadn’t believed in God, nor had she placed any stock in tradition, but her Remembrance was being held in a church anyway. It was the only large, undamaged building within the confines of the camp.  
  
Plus, the place was air conditioned. Thank God for small favors.  
  
John settled against the back wall as the Remembrance began. First up was Oscar, a tall, broad-shouldered young man with olive skin, a crooked nose, and an equally crooked grin. Today, his eyes were swollen and rimmed red. From what John understood, Oscar had been Cammie’s on-again, off-again love interest at the kinetics Praxeum in Manchester.  
  
He cleared his throat loudly, signaling that he was ready to speak. “I remember Camille Nicole Greene.” Oscar enunciated the ceremonial Remembrance words carefully. Religion was rich with ritual, yes, but the rest of society was not without its tradition. “I remember once, we were sitting together in her kitchen when we were students at the Praxeum. I started choking on...on a carrot, I think. Something throat shaped, anyway. Well, Cam, she saw me spluttering and ran to the fridge. Instead of grabbing the first thing she saw, she turned round and asked me whether I preferred orange juice or beer.” John smiled weakly at that, and some low chuckles rose from the assembly. “But that was Cam. No situation was so dire that she couldn’t make a joke.” Tears spilled silently down Oscar’s cheeks. He closed his eyes and raised a single fist in salute. “I love you, Cam, and I’ll miss you terribly. I will remember you always. So is my vow.”  
  
John echoed the final phrase in unison with the rest of the crowd. “So is our vow.”  
  
Speaker after speaker shared their memories of Cammie. About halfway through the Remembrance, John slung his arm over Mal’s shoulders and pulled her into him. She stiffened for a moment, then leaned into his side, accepting comfort freely given. Mal had been close with Cammie, closer than John had been, and she needed the support.  
  
After the Remembrance ended, John exited the chapel and ventured into the church’s lobby, his arm still wrapped around Mallory’s waist. He let the arm drop, though, when he saw who was waiting there. Standing in the lobby, silhouetted by the sunlight streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows, was Sherlock. He looked the same as he ever had; tall, elegant, maybe a touch thinner. Not even a war zone could get him into fatigues, apparently, because he was still wearing one of those blasted suits - charcoal grey with a white shirt, the top two buttons undone. Sherlock raised his eyebrows slightly and began to walk toward the storage rooms in the back of the church.  
  
John made his excuses to Mallory and followed. He’d suspected that Sherlock was in the Colonies - a new “strategic consultant” showing up just as the battle in Georgia turned south was too much of a coincidence to actually be a coincidence - but he hadn’t known how he would react if they crossed paths. In the long, sleepless nights after he’d first deployed, he only imagined he’d feel anger. Now that the time had come, he felt an uncomfortable mix of regret, loneliness, loss, and desire.  
  
As he entered the small, stuffy storage room Sherlock had chosen, it occurred to him that Sherlock had timed this...reunion...with measured logic. It was exactly like him, to wait until John was emotionally drained and vulnerable before he showed up. He probably thought John would be easier to handle in this state. The timing also revealed that Sherlock was nervous about talking to him, that he’d probably been dreading it. If he was here, in spite of that, there had to be a compelling reason.  
  
Sherlock spoke first. “John. I’m pleased you’re still alive.” He was projecting a carefully cultivated air of nonchalance that John was sure he wasn’t feeling.  
  
“Uh, thanks. Me too.” John licked his lips. This was so surreal. “How have you been?”  
  
Sherlock tilted his head quizzically, surprised at the question. “As well as can be expected.” His fingers flitted fitfully across the luxurious fabric of his trousers. “I have come to discuss Moriarty. It has been decided that you are to be made aware of his actions in regards to your person.”  
  
“What?” That last sentence was formal to the point of incomprehensibility. “You can relax, Sherlock. I’m not looking for a fight.”  
  
The other man’s jaw tightened. “Moriarty is trying to kill you.”  
  
“Oh.” John blinked. “So you’re here.”  
  
“I certainly didn’t leave London for Mycroft.” Sherlock came closer, stopping just outside John’s personal space. “I said I wouldn’t let you die, and even after...everything...I intend to keep that promise.”  
  
John took an involuntary step back. Oh, yeah. He loved this man. With seven months of distance from the hurt of their implosion, he was finally in a position to remember why. “He’s after me specifically? How do you know?”

“Think, John. Every battlefield you’re on, your unit is the target the Empire’s most Collared-heavy units. Augusta, for example. That northern unit was covered by projectionists. If I hadn’t noticed, you would have been cut off, crushed. There’s no tactical advantage to that. It’s a game.” He put his hand in his pocket. “Besides, Moriarty left me a note.” Sherlock pulled a piece of paper out and handed it to John.  
  
 _I’m gonna eviscerate your boyfriend, boyfriend. Come play? XOXO Jim_  
  
“Well.” The note was written on soft, expensive paper. John folded it and handed it back. “That’s pretty clear.”  
  
“You understand this means it’s too dangerous for you to be involved in frontline battles?”  
  
John bristled. “Frontline battles are dangerous for everyone. I know you don’t like following the rules, but you can’t assign me safer duties for personal reasons.”  
  
“This isn’t just for you.” Sherlock gestured toward the front of the church. “You’re at a Remembrance, John. When you’re in the field, you put other people at risk.”  
  
“You don’t care about them.”  
  
“You do.”  
  
For the first time since this started, John felt anger. Mostly, he was angry at himself for being angry - Sherlock was right, after all. “Very clever. I’m happy to see Cammie’s death served a purpose.”  
  
“I will use whatever is necessary.”  
  
And there was the rub. Sherlock was too willing to manipulate for his own ends. John scrubbed a hand over his scalp and looked out the window. He needed a moment where he wasn’t looking at the man he used to kiss and hold and sleep with and sleep next to. Distracted by his own thoughts, John’s reply slipped past his brain-to-mouth filter. “Just like Mycroft.”  
  
Sherlock’s entire demeanor changed; his shoulders stiffened and his eyes turned to flakes of ice. John backpedaled hastily. “I didn’t mean-”  
  
Sherlock cut him off. “You did. Obviously you’re still angry about what I did, so I’ll make this as painless as possible. You are to transfer to a small squad scouting guerilla resistance opportunities in southern Appalachia. Report to command tomorrow for your new orders. You’ll join your new squad immediately.”  
  
“You’re transferring me out of my unit?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I don’t think so.” Sherlock narrowed his eyes. The ice had yet to melt. “I mean, I’ll go, but Karl and Mal come with me.”  
  
“Absolutely not. You’re too distinctive as a team. You might be recognized.”  
  
That was a good point, but John wasn’t going to back down. “Yes, we’re a team. We’re used to working together. I’ll be safer with them than I’ll be on my own.”  
  
Sherlock took a step forward. John had been waiting for this. Sherlock had never been shy about invading other people’s personal space. “You seem quite _keen_ on remaining with that girl.”  
  
“I’m _keen_ on remaining with my team.” John started to roll his eyes but paused midway, staring at the ceiling. A spider hung near the wall, suspended on a thread of silk. He flicked his eyes back to Sherlock. “You’re jealous. Tell me you’re not jealous of Mal. She’s a friend Sherlock, and she’s saved my life more times than I can count.”  
  
“Fine, then.” Sherlock’s voice was lower than usual, but louder as well. “Take Monica with you, and the ginger one too. Take whatever you want, in spite of my objections, in spite of common sense. You stupid man.”  
  
John squinted his eyes. Genuine worry shimmered across Sherlock’s face, contradicting his harsh tone. John could feel himself relenting. He couldn’t keep this up; he couldn’t stay angry at Sherlock forever, not when Sherlock was standing here, caring about him. “You’re so goddamned stupid and confused and scared, Sherlock, that you don’t even know it.” John pressed his hand against Sherlock’s chest, fingers splayed. “I was yours. But you weren’t ready, and I didn’t have time to wait. What you did was...um, immature?...but we’re human. I’ll forgive you if you’ll forgive me.”

Looking unsure, Sherlock wrapped his fingers around John’s wrist and tugged. “What are you doing? Aren’t we arguing?”

John tried to answer, but he wasn’t sure himself. He didn’t know how to explain how hurt he’d been, or how much he’d missed him. He couldn’t explain that he’d made mistakes too, big ones. So, in lieu of words, he thought of Sherlock, haloed by sunlight in a church window, and he kissed him. He kissed him like he had the first time: tentative at first, then long and slow. After they broke apart, Sherlock spoke first, breathless. “I thought you, ah, hated me.”  
  
“No.” John smiled sadly and wrapped his hand around the back of Sherlock’s slender neck. “I love you.” He tightened his grip on taught muscle, keeping Sherlock close. “Listen to me. I love you. You’ve heard me say that four times now and you haven’t spontaneously combusted. Now, I’m sorry I called you Mycroft. You are most certainly not Mycroft, and for all I know, it’s growing up with him that made you like this.”  
  
Sherlock sighed. “He’s a nightmare.”  
  
“Yes, well.” John let his hand drop. “Maybe I shouldn’t have kissed you just then. You’re still not ready, I don’t think. But I didn’t know how else to get past...everything.” He stepped back. “I’ll do the scouting, and you’ll get the orders for Karl and Mal to come with me, yes?”  
  
The ceiling spider had made its way over to the corner and had begun to spin a web. Sherlock scowled. “I’ll secure the orders.” His expression softened. “And I am sorry about your friend.”  
  
“Thank you. I’m going now. Once this is over, if you ever feel ready, come find me. And thanks for the heads up on Moriarty. I’ll be careful.”  
  
“I will as well. Thank you, John.” Sherlock held up his hand, palm forward, and smiled. The smile was small, but it was genuine.  
  
Reconciliation was a wonderful thing.  
  
For the next few weeks, John hunted for caves and rabbit trails in the Appalachian Mountains. His new squad was small: just eight soldiers, plus Karl, Mallory, and the new kinetic, Andy. Things were quiet.  
  
One morning, while hiking south through a treed valley, Karl threw up his hand. His voice came through John’s speaker. “I can feel someone up the eastern slope. They’re using the Aura.”  
  
John unhooked his binoculars from his vest and focused on the slope. A curl of smoke rose from the trees, twisting into the sky. “A non-Affiliated, you think? These hills are full of people, and they hardly ever send their children to Praxeums.”  
  
Mallory joined them. “It could very well be. We should check this out.”  
  
A thrill went up John’s spine. This was probably nothing, but anything was better than the dull monotony of the last few weeks. John almost regretted capitulating to Sherlock with so little fight. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time.  
  
John issued his orders. “Karl, Mal, and I will go up, along with Johnson and Roberts. Andy and Cooper, you’re our cover. The rest of you, stay here. Watch our backs.”  
  
The five of them began their slog up the hill. Mallory provided cover, pulling light and shadow around them to conceal their movement. Karl guided them, feeling his way toward the source of the Aura.  
  
Finally, they found the non-Affiliated. He was a young person, dressed in filthy jeans and a faded plaid jacket. He was also using the Aura to chop wood, cleaving great logs in half with apparently little effort. A kinetic, then. John raised an eyebrow at Karl, who nodded. The man was alone.  
  
At his signal, they Mallory dropped her projection. They stepped out of the bushes and approached the young man, weapons drawn. John took the lead. “Release the Aura, hands up! We’re not here for you, we just want to ask you some questions. It’s in your best interests to cooperate.”  
  
The man turned slowly to face them, hands raised. His face was a study in pity.  
  
Without warning, the entire cabin vanished. In its place stood at least a dozen Collared, and a half dozen handlers.  
  
John turned instinctually toward cover. “It’s a trap!” He could hear Karl somewhere to the left of him, repeating the same phrase over and over - _I couldn’t feel them, I couldn’t feel them, why couldn’t I feel them_.  
  
An explosion on the valley floor tore up the slope. John cursed, dodging frantically. There must have been more Collared hidden on the opposite slope. Andy was under attack. How had they missed this? He reached out to the Collared chasing him down the slope, frantic, trying to sever an artery, block nerves, anything. Nothing happened. His mind flashed to Irene, straddling Sherlock. He hadn’t been able to affect her either.  
  
And then John got caught. The branches on the trees to either side of him sprang to life, wrapping around his limbs like skeletal hands. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even turn his head to the side. He could hear footsteps behind him, though. Snippets of his last conversation with Sherlock ran through his head on a ticker as the person closed in behind him: _Moriarty is trying to kill you; Every battlefield you’re on, your unit is the target; You’re too distinctive as a team. You might be recognized_.  
  
Christ. Sherlock would be unbearably smug about this the next time he saw him.  
  
John felt a sting in the side of his neck and everything went black.


	13. Chapter 13

John awoke under a shadowy canopy in a bright room. He felt the way he used to feel as a teenager after a wild night of obnoxious drinking: his eyelids gummed together with grit, his mouth lacked any semblance of moisture, his head throbbed to the beat of his heart, and his hands shook with dehydration. At least he wasn’t dead.  
  
Blinking the razors from his eyes, John took stock of his situation. He was lying on a massive, canopied bed, tightly tucked beneath heavily embroidered covers. The bed’s mattress was outrageously soft, rearranging itself around John’s shape and sucking him down as he struggled to push the blankets off. Intricate carvings of birds and leaves twined up the wooden posts of the bed, drawing his eye up to weighty burgundy and gold hangings, and, ultimately, to the giant mirror that covered the entire width and breadth of the underside of the canopy.  
  
When John caught sight of himself in the mirror, he gripped the sheets hard and worked to control the panic rising in his chest; around his neck was a Collar, and, worryingly, it was not the plain silver band he was used to seeing in the field. Rather, coiled around his neck was a thick, segmented snake. The ornately worked gold snake came together in a circle just below John’s throat, where it bit its own tail.  
  
John stared at the Collar in the mirror, bringing his hands up until they hovered just above the offensive object. He wanted to grip it, to run his fingers along the segments, but he couldn’t; the harder he tried, the greater the force with which the Collar repelled his hand, like the same poles of two magnets. Giving up, he rolled off the bed to inspect the rest of the room.  
  
The room and everything in it dripped with needless opulence. A multitude of paper globes hung from the high ceiling, suffusing the room with warm, golden light. There were no windows. Dark wood paneling covered the floor and plush white rugs had been added under the bed and beneath the small sitting area by the door. A crystal pitcher of water and a glass stood on a small table in the far corner. He himself was dressed in soft, black sweatpants and a white cotton shirt.  
  
John breathed in through his nose, preparing to test his connection with the Aura, but immediately gagged. The room was saturated with the smell of roses. Nose crinkled with disgust, John reached for the Aura again. He grasped it easily. Comforted by the feeling of connectedness that always came with handling Aura, John grasped as much as he could and tried to ease the pounding in his head.  
  
Nothing happened. He tried to stimulate the saliva glands in his mouth. Nothing happened. He tried to do anything, anything at all, with his power. Nothing.  
  
Sighing deeply, John walked to the door. That was the name of the game then. He could hold the Aura, but he couldn’t use it. Not until his handler directed him. He’d known that was how the Collars worked, but to have it confirmed was...disheartening.  
  
The door - a metal, utilitarian affair - stood in stark contrast to the rest of the decor. There was no visible handle. A slot, covered now, was cut near the floor, presumably for food. John ran his hands over the smooth metal, then banged his head against it softly. “Well. Shit.” Abandoning the door, John walked to the sitting area and dropped into one of the elegant, well-cushioned chairs. His neck itched.  
  
Without windows or clocks, he could only sit and think and wait for something to happen.  
  
Eventually, of course, something did happen. With no warning, John lost control of his body. He couldn’t move his head from where it rested against the back of the chair, couldn’t uncross his legs, couldn’t blink his eyes. At least his lungs and heart were still working.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the door slide open silently. In the doorway stood James Moriarty, hand on hip, head cocked to the side, playful grin on his face. John had been expecting a visit from the tyrant since he’d seen the unusual Collar he’d been fitted with. That the man seemed even smaller in person than he did on television was cold comfort at the moment.  
  
Moriarty swept in the room, the door sliding shut behind him. “John Hamish Watson. I would say it’s a pleasure, but...” He stopped directly in front of John and held his right hand inches from John’s face. A thin gold ring winked dully on his finger. “Before we start our little chat, I want you to comprehend exactly where you stand. I own you. You are my pet, my tame pup, and as long as I hold your leash,” he tapped the Ring, “you will be an obedient pup. Understand?”  
  
He wiggled his Ring finger up and down, and John’s head bobbed with it in an exaggerated nod. “Excellent! I hope you appreciate that Collar, by the way. I designed it myself. Now, before I release you, a few minor details. You will not harm, or conspire to harm, yourself or others or the Empire unless I say otherwise. I will not have you breaking my toys. And you will not escape. Understand?” He wiggled his finger again, and John’s head followed. “That’s a good boy.”  
  
As suddenly as it began, the paralysis ended, but still his body betrayed him. James Moriarty, murderer, madman, and oppressor of Adepts everywhere, was steps away, completely unguarded, and John could do nothing but stare. He ached with the desire to wrap his hands around Moriarty’s delicate throat, but his muscles refused to obey.  
  
Moriarty chuckled. “Feisty! I was never one for impotent defiance, myself, but to each his own.” He sat in the chair opposite John, legs crossed. “Speaking of, how is Sherlock? I was _so_ disappointed he decided to play house with you after New Year’s, but seeing as how he was back to fucking his way through London before the month was out, I’m willing to call it a phase.”  
  
John refused to rise to the bait. “What do you want?”  
  
Moriarty leaned forward, reptilian eyes full of contempt. “Hmmm, what do I want? Let me tell you a story, _pet_. Once upon a time, a little boy was growing up in Ireland under the yoke of British rule. The boy was a genius! Worth more than all the drooling mouth-breathers in that town put together. But was his genius recognized?” He paused as if he were waiting for John to answer. John stayed silent, but eyed Moriarty warily; the other man seemed too large for the room now, rather than fragile or small. When it became clear John would not answer, Moriarty’s cheek twitched, but he continued, his voice deadly soft. “Was his genius recognized? No, it was not. How could it be, with _ADEPTS_ running everything? The boy was forced to watch as his less-intelligent, less-talented _peers-_ “ His entire face twisted with the strength of his disgust as he uttered the word. “-were fawned over, promoted, sent off to Praxeums, just because they could use the Aura. Which, as it turns out, is not as great an advantage as it seems. Isn’t that right, Johnny boy?”  
  
John’s head nodded again, independent of his will. Moriarty smiled cruelly. “Good pup. This boy, though, he was young and foolish and he didn’t understand, not yet. He saw corrupt Adepts, the Mycrofts of the world, pulling the strings of the Monarchy and enslaving average folk, and he despaired. You can understand, can’t you dear, why the boy lashed out? Why he killed? Why he abandoned his tainted homeland and raised an army of his own? It’s time for Adepts to serve the greater good. The Uncollared can no longer be allowed to hold humanity back. Only then will we live happily ever after.”  
  
If Moriarty was doing this for humanity’s sake, John would eat his socks. Besides, he hadn’t answered his actual question. “I meant, what do you want with Sherlock? I’m not fool enough to think you’d go through this trouble for me.”  
  
“Ah, yes.” Moriarty leaned back, carelessly relaxed once again. His violent mood swings were impressive to behold. “Sherlock came to my attention when he started freelancing for his brother. Too bad he’s not ten years older. Perhaps then I would have heard of him before I left for Poland.” He fluttered his hand dismissively. “Whatever. I saw an amoral genius struggling to rise above the constraints of an Adept-dominated society. He’s my equal, and I want him. So I’ve made him an offer he can’t refuse. If he comes to me, I’ll give him control of your Collar. If he doesn’t, well...you’d better hope he does. I’ve given him forty-eight hours to decide.”  
  
Moriarty came closer, running his hands over the bristly spikes of hair on John’s head. He crouched in front of John, steadying himself on John’s knees. “I have to admit, I’ve wanted to meet you for ages. I’d hoped that if I met you, I’d be able to see what he sees.” He began to stroke his hands up John’s thighs, coming uncomfortably close to his crotch and prompting John to fidget in his seat. Moriarty puffed his lips in an exaggerated pout, eyes wide. “Shhh, shhh. Don’t worry. I _can_ see it. So patient, so honest, so willing to worship at his altar. And just _look_ at that body!” He lifted John’s shirt and traced his finger down his abdomen, massaging hard muscle built through years of military training. “You’d tempt any narcissist. But like all Adepts, I’m afraid you just don’t. Measure. Up.”  
  
Quick as lightning, Moriarty yanked John forward by his Collar and slapped him across the face, hard. Stunned and stung, John didn’t resist when Moriarty pulled him closer to whisper fervently in his ear. Not that he could resist, if he wanted. “That, pet, is for daring to touch. How could you ever think you’d be enough?”  
  
He threw John back into the chair and walked toward the door, all smiles once again. He waved at John as the door slid open. “See you soon!” The door closed behind him and the twister stopped spinning.  
  
John sat in the chair for a long time after Moriarty’s visit. That hadn’t been a conversation, it had been a massacre. Finally, he understood exactly why Britain was losing the war.  
  
The next two days were uneventful. Several plates of food were deposited through the slot on the door. John drank water - and it was just water, evidently - from the pitcher in the corner. After Moriarty, no one came to see him and the door never opened.  
  
His only companion was his growing anxiety. Sherlock wouldn’t actually show up. Would he? And what if he didn’t? John could not stifle his fear when he remembered the deadly promise in Moriarty’s eyes.    
  
He knew the clock had run out when he found himself paralyzed like he’d been before Moriarty had visited. Turned away from the door as he was, he couldn’t see who entered. Judging by the heavy footfalls, it wasn’t Moriarty. It wasn’t Sherlock either, thank God.  
  
A hand pulled John’s shoulder, and he was tipped back into the arms of a hulking mountain of man. A familiar man, unfortunately. This was the one who had gutted Princess Mary. What was his name? Sebastian. John was sure it was Sebastian. Too bad he couldn’t move his mouth to ask.  
  
Sebastian dragged him out the door into a wide, antiseptically white corridor. The floor sloped down, leading deeper into the complex. The halls were ominously deserted; John didn’t see another living soul during the entirety of their journey.  
  
When they reached their destination, Sebastian dropped John on the floor while he pressed his palm against the locking mechanism of the metal door in front of him. The palm reader beeped and he grabbed John under the shoulders again. As he dragged him across the threshold, the giant man looked down and shook his blond head. “Soldier to soldier, man, I’m sorry.”

So. Sherlock had refused. Good for him.    
  
The cavernous room beyond the door was familiar too, and, John realized with growing trepidation, for the same reason that Sebastian had been familiar. Sebastian had gutted Princess Mary, and this room is where he’d done it.  
  
Sebastian posed John, puppet-like, over the grate in the middle of the floor, in full view of the professional-looking camera by the wall. As John watched, the light on the camera blinked from red to green. Whatever was about to happen was going to happen live.

 John would have laughed, if he could. Sherlock must have done more than just refuse, if Moriarty was taking this public. Pride bubbled through John’s veins, all light and air.  
  
In his peripheral vision, John saw the door open. If Moriarty had been a twister earlier, now he was a full-blown hurricane. His unbridled fury filled every crack and hollow of the room to such an extent that John was sure the home viewers would feel it through their televisions. Of more immediate concern to John, however, were the heavy brass rings that had joined the original Ring on Moriarty’s right hand. That did not bode well.  
  
Unlike the Princess Mary incident, this time Moriarty did not stop to gloat. With no preamble, he slammed his fist into John’s jaw. Unable to move with the punch, John felt his jaw crack under the full force of the blow. Blood welled up in his mouth, along with a tooth that’d been knocked loose. The pain was intense.  
  
Moriarty stepped back, gesturing for Sebastian to take his place. John tried to prepare himself, but it was useless. Efficiently brutal as only a trained fighter could be, Sebastian tossed him back and forth like a rag doll, raining blows on his kidneys, his chest, his head. Bones snapped and organs bruised. A vicious kick in the stomach had him coughing blood.  
  
An eternity later, a misaimed throw cracked the back of John’s head against the concrete floor. Delirious and relieved, he embraced the darkness as it swept him under.  
  
***  
  
The thirty odd soldiers in the British command tent watched the screen in horrified silence as a mid-level British Adept, one with a strange gold Collar, was beaten to a bloody pulp by one Moriarty’s henchman.  
  
Sherlock Holmes, strategic consultant, stood in the midst of the crowd, unable to look away. He felt a moment of relief as John slipped into unconsciousness, then blinding anger as the beating continued regardless. Finally, _finally_ , the giant man - Sherlock knew he was Sebastian Moran: born in the Colonies, orphaned at eight, entered the military at eighteen, sniper, Moriarty’s enforcer, etc., etc. - halted his assault.  
  
Breathing heavily, Moriarty turned to the camera, his eyes intensely wild. “Sherlock Holmes. Stop your attack. Come to me. If you don’t, this will happen again. And again. And again.” The screen dissolved into static.  
  
Sherlock could feel the eyes of every person in the tent fix on him. On the outside, he remained expressionless. Some of the personnel in the tent turned away from him, unnerved by his seeming indifference. On the inside, however, he was on fire. He stood, motionless, in the heart of his mind palace, as the world he’d been struggling to build burnt to ash around him.


	14. Chapter 14

Wincing with his entire body, John opened a puffy, purple eye and tried to force the room into focus. A thousand needles erupted under his skin with the movement, wringing an agonized moan from the depths of his throat.  
  
“You’re awake.” The voice wafted over John, urging him closer to complete consciousness. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope you don’t feel as bad as you look.”  
  
It took spectacular effort, but John managed to wrench his eyes open. Hovering at his bedside was a portly, middle-aged man dressed in a white doctor’s coat. A silver Collar was locked around his neck. Disoriented, John attempted to ask the man what had happened, only to have a starburst of pain in his jaw bring him up short.  
  
“Don’t speak. You’ve got a broken jaw. Broken jaw, broken ribs, bruised kidneys and liver, broken nose, fractured skull. That’s an impressive list, considering most of those could have killed you by themselves.” The man tapped John’s arm on an unbruised patch of skin. “Lucky for you, I’m quite good at this. It hurts my professional pride that I can’t block the pain, but the boss left very specific instructions. I’ll put you under for a few more days while you heal. That’s the best I can do.”  
  
Before he could fully comprehend what the man had said, a rush of Aura blew him back to a blessedly painless sleep.  
  
Waking up the second time was easier, though by no means pleasant. More aware now, John could see he was in a well-stocked infirmary, surrounded by beeping medical equipment. The large man was there once again, touching John’s temple lightly with his fingers.  
  
“Feeling better? You look better. As you should, really, with the energy I’ve been putting into you.” He handed John a sealed cup of water with a straw sticking out the top. “The boss wants you more or less healed by this time two days from now.”  
  
The water felt heavenly against John’s parched throat, even if swallowing made him painfully aware of his Collar. After a few exploratory stretches of his jaw, he felt comfortable attempting speech. “Who are you?”  
  
“I’m Mike Stamford.  Collared in Paris.” He took the cup from John. “That’s what I get for marrying French.”  
  
“I’m John. Uh, John Watson.” He flinched as he eased himself up the bed, ribs protesting. Mike seemed like a nice enough bloke, under the circumstances. The man liked to talk. “What happened? My recollection is a bit spotty.”  
  
“Repeated blows to the head will do that to a person.” Chuckling, Mike began to delve John with Aura. “As far as I can tell, the boss made an example of you in retaliation for the attack on the Collared camp. He had his man beat you senseless and broadcast it live with a personal message tacked on the end for that new strategist of theirs. The one with the funny name. Sherlock Holmes.”  
  
That got John’s attention. “What attack?”  
  
“Well, you wouldn’t have heard, would you?” Finished with his delving, Mike made a notation on a chart at the end of the bed. “There are so many new Collared from the war that the Empire established an intake camp outside Atlanta. The British hit the camp, oh, five days ago, a few hours before you were brought to me. They freed a not inconsiderable number of Collared, or so I heard. ”  
  
“And Moriarty addressed Sherlock Holmes directly?”  
  
“Oh, yes. Ordered Holmes to withdraw his troops and surrender himself to the Empire’s custody, or he would repeat. Honestly, I’m not sure how powerful a motivator that will be. No offense, mate, but you’re nothing special.”  
  
“Right.” John closed his eyes, grateful that he could. Had Sherlock thought he was at the Collared camp, or had the attack already been planned? In any event, leave it to Sherlock to issue what was probably the most resounding rejection of all time. No wonder Moriarty had reacted violently.  
  
Mistaking John’s thoughtfulness for despair, Mike patted his hand reassuringly. “I’m having you moved back to your room tonight. I’ll check on you in the morning and several times a day for the next few days, to speed the your healing.”  
  
John’s eyes flew open as Mike’s words hit. He hadn’t put much thought into next.  
  
Mike continued, growing more serious with each word. “You’ll be healed by your next meeting with the boss. My advice: don’t fight him. The boss doesn’t want you dead, not yet. Don’t give him a reason to change his mind. As long as you’re alive, you have a chance, and whatever happens, I’ll be here when it’s over.”  
  
Stomach clenched in sudden nausea, John spent the next few minutes dry heaving into a basin while Mike stood vigil at the door.  
  
Sherlock, to John’s immense relief and equally immense horror, did not capitulate. The paralysis came again, two days later and exactly a week after the beating,with John sitting on the edge of his bed, hands folded neatly in his lap. Mike had been as good as his word; other than the occasional twinge in his abdomen, he was completely healed. A blank canvass.  
  
To John’s surprise, Moriarty entered alone, dressed casually in dark jeans and a white shirt. He looked younger than John without his suit. He also didn’t seem angry, like last time. On the contrary, he practically skipped across the floor. In his hand was a small, sleek video camera.  
  
“Hello, pet.” Moriarty bounced on the bed next to John, nudging him with his shoulder like an old friend. “You’re looking well. Sorry for losing my temper, but you know how Sherlock can be. Always pushing buttons, that one.” Flipping out the view screen, he turned on the camera. “He’s still being stubborn, but I don’t mind, really. Gives us the chance to get to know each other better. Why don’t you make yourself more comfortable?”  
  
Moriarty’s words released John, who immediately made to stand. Before he could, Moriarty spoke again, an afterthought, as he thumbed through his saved videos. “Don’t get off the bed. That’s a dear.”  
  
John lowered himself slowly, inching as far from Moriarty as possible. It was the goddamn Collar. Hands fisted in the sheets, he thought back to just a month ago. He thought back to Sherlock, silhouetted by fiery Carolina sunlight in the lobby of a dying church. He thought back to tense words opening and expanding until they became something else entirely, a stolen kiss full of possibility. He remembered the spider spinning its web in the corner.  
  
What if he could never, ever be that man again? What if he could never be that strong again? Never be that brave?  
  
Never that free?  
  
“Hello, Earth to Johnny.” The oily syllables razored through John’s mind, severing him from his reverie. Once Moriarty had John’s attention, he beckoned him closer. “I have something you might want to see. It’s a friend of yours.” He pressed play.  
  
The video was of Mallory. The camera zoomed in on her scratched face, following the path of her tears as they fell down her cheeks. As the camera zoomed out, the reason for Mal’s distress became apparent. She was being soldered into a Collar.  
  
“Stop it.” John said it quietly the first time, then louder. “Stop it. Please, just stop.”  
  
“Begging already?” Moriarty tilted his head quizzically, voice rich with mock puzzlement. “I thought you’d like it. Your friend is alive.”  
  
“She’s a slave.”  
  
“She’s serving a greater purpose.”  
  
“She’s serving you.”  
  
Moriarty lifted a single finger and pointed it straight at him, slowly, as if John had uttered some sacred truth. “Exactly.”  
  
John shook his head. For a second, the arrogant lilt of Moriarty’s voice had sounded just like Sherlock. “That’s not serving a greater purpose. It’s wrong.”  
  
Rolling his eyes, Moriarty grabbed John’s chin, digging his fingers into soft flesh. He forced John to meet his black eyes. “Right, wrong. Nothing but the cultural fantasies of a failed civilization. You think I’m a bad boy because I do bad things? Because I’m vain and bored and do as I please? Tell me, pet, do you think me insane?” His eyes flitted back and forth rapidly as they searched John’s face. He grinned menacingly at what he found there. “You’re insane, to be content with mediocrity. You and every other tedious wretch on this miserable planet, mewling constantly over right and wrong. There is only boredom and relief, and if you think I won’t flay the flesh from your body to secure the one other human I’ve encountered who understands that, you’re truly out of your mind.”  
  
He released John’s jaw, exhaling loudly. “But let no one say I’m not a patient man. I’m willing to play this game with Sherlock, so long as he is willing to accept the consequences. I thought we’d make a little video for him, as a reminder.”  
  
John steeled himself, muscles tensing. This was it.  
  
“That it will be thoroughly enjoyable for me is a happy coincidence.” Moriarty turned an appraising eye on John, sliding his gaze down, then up. “You really are quite delectable. Up on the bed, clothes off.”  
  
John tried to fight, he did, but how could he fight a Collar? Before he knew it, he was crawling to the middle of the bed and pulling off his shirt. The strange, disassociated feeling was like twisted muscle memory to the nth degree. Like when he used to leave his bedroom in search of his laptop, only to get distracted and have his feet take him to the teapot in the kitchen, leaving him with no memory of the journey. He laid on his back, shimmying out of his trousers.  
  
Meanwhile, Moriarty had started recording. He was speaking directly to the camera, the lens aimed at his face. “Sherlock! That was quite the stunt you pulled with my Collared camp. I hated every second of what happened to Johnny after, but, well...you break something of mine, I break something of yours. Not to worry though, he’s perfectly fine.” Moriarty turned the camera on John, who was now crouched on the bed, completely naked save for the snake Collar curled around his neck. The warm light from the globes on the ceiling highlighted the unevenness of his tan, even under the shadow of the canopy. “See? Not a scratch. And he’s already forgiven me. Come, pet, tell Sherlock that you forgive me.”  
  
John gritted his teeth, hoping it would keep the words in. Unfortunately, gritting his teeth didn’t help at all. “I forgive him.”  
  
“So compassionate, our John.” Moriarty swung the camera back to his own face, eyes glittering with wicked glee. “I’ve grown rather fond of him, and I’ve been thinking of taking our relationship to the next level. John’s been so lonely without you, pining away. I think he needs some comfort in your absence. But I don’t want you to be jealous, darling. I know you found him first. As a courtesy to you, I’ve decided honesty is the best policy. On your back, John. And no talking.”  
  
John did as directed, lying back and meeting his own outraged eyes in the canopy mirror. He studied himself critically, cataloguing every scar and freckle as Moriarty crawled up beside him. Although he had never been overly concerned with his appearance, he had always had a comfortable awareness of his own body. As his skill with the Aura grew, his connection with his body had strengthened as well. His body was solid, reliable.  
  
Except his body wasn’t his now.  
  
Moriarty curled into John’s side and met his gaze in the mirror. He pointed the camera up, making sure to catch them both in the mirror’s reflection.  
  
“Is this what he was like for you, Sherlock?” He wiggled his free hand under John’s neck and began to make long, gentle strokes down the right side of John’s face. “Look at his eyes. So defiant.”  
  
He transferred the camera to the hand that had been stroking John’s face, freeing up his other hand to trail languidly down John’s chest. His eyes never left the mirror, never stopped boring straight into the camera. “I have a confession, Sherlock. When I’m alone at night, I imagine what it would be like to touch you like this.” He moved his hand lower. “You’re beautiful, and you know it. Those legs, those cheekbones, those eyes. That skin. I bet your skin feels like silk. And your hair! John can back me up on that. Johnny loves your hair.”  
  
Quivering with hatred, John tried to calm himself. Judging by the nearly euphoric expression on his face, Moriarty was luxuriating in John’s struggle.  
  
“Of course, there are parts of yourself you hide.”  Calm quickly became a pipe dream, however, when Moriarty circled his hand loosely around John’s soft cock. Every muscle in John’s body stiffened in a vain attempt to retreat. Moriarty’s hand felt scalding hot.  
  
At John’s reaction, Moriarty finally turned his attention from the camera. “Don’t fret, pet. I’m not going to touch you.” He withdrew his hand from under John’s neck. “You’re going to touch me. Now get down there and work that zip. Let’s show Sherlock what he’s missing.”  
  
John closed his eyes briefly, desperately searching for a way out. Nothing appeared. Instead, he draped himself over Moriarty’s thighs and reached for the buttons on the man’s jeans. The sick bastard was already hard.  
  
“Wait, John.” John looked up at Moriarty, only to be met with the lens of the camera. “I see why you like him, Sherlock. He’s perfect like this, wide eyed and ready to suck cock. When you come to me, maybe we can share him. Alright, back to it.”  
  
In that moment, John decided he would occupy his mind by imagining every possible way to kill James Moriarty. His thoughts must have shown on his face, because Moriarty filmed every second, immensely pleased.  
  
When it was over, John rolled onto his back and then onto his side, facing away from the door. He wanted to wash his mouth out with the water from the crystal pitcher, but he didn’t want to give Moriarty the satisfaction.  
  
At the same time, Moriarty was cleaning himself with John’s shirt as he finished the video. “Look at this logically, Sherlock. It’s in everyone’s best interest if you do what I want. Withdraw your troops. Come to me. If you don’t, this will happen again. Only next time, I can promise you it will be much less fun. You have one week.”  
  
A click sounded loudly in the now quiet room as Moriarty flipped the camera closed. “That was lovely, pet. Sherlock will have this before the day is out.” He leaned across the bed to brush his fingers over the skin of John’s neck, right over the Collar. “See you soon.” John listened hard, tracking Moriarty’s footsteps until they disappeared from the room.


	15. Chapter 15

“Look at this logically, Sherlock. It’s in everyone’s best interest if you do what I want. Withdraw your troops. Come to me. If you don’t, this will happen again. Only next time, I can promise you it will be much less fun. You have one week.”  
  
The video ended, frozen on its final frame. Moriarty’s face took up the majority of it, his delicate features flushed pink from recent exertion. A sated softness had crept into the corners of his half-hooded eyes, the real emotion unnatural on Moriarty’s plastic face. Behind him, barely visible in the space over Moriarty’s thin shoulder, was John’s naked back.  
  
Escalation. John’s freckled shoulders were hunched and drawn up toward his ears, leaving his shoulders blades standing out in flat contrast to the rest of his back. This was worse, so much worse, than last time. Hit John, kick John, beat him until he bleeds, and he will come back stronger. Sherlock knew that from experience. But what if one were to fill him with self-doubt and self-loathing? What would happen to John if he were made to feel powerless and vulnerable, and then violated in that state?  
  
Sherlock was aware of how he’d behaved during his first sexual encounters with John: dominant, controlling, desperate to keep him off balance. The mere thought of how…Moriarty-like…he’d been made him want to tear his hair out by the roots. Yet, John had not left. Not until Sherlock had left him no choice.  
  
Grief, panic, frustration, and a dozen other un-identifiable emotions tumbled over each other in Sherlock’s chest, threatening to claw through his ribcage with every breath. Acidic moisture burned his tear ducts, unwelcome and unwanted. It was too much, beyond too much. He pressed his middle and index fingers to his temples with as much force as possible, pressing his emotions down into a little white oak box in the innermost room of what remained of his mind palace. Sherlock locked the box as soon as the feelings were safely inside and dropped the iron key in his pocket. It was a technique he’d developed as a boy, to evade Mycroft’s prying empathic ability, and he’d used it to great success ever since. He breathed deeply, no longer overwhelmed.  
  
He could not allow himself to feel these things, not if he wanted to think clearly enough to get John back. He’d allowed his emotions to get the better of him after the beating, and the results spoke for themselves; he’d fallen right into Moriarty’s trap, believing that John was in the Atlanta camp. Never again.    
  
Forcing himself to ignore the metaphysical ash and smoke drifting on the currents of his mind, Sherlock arrowed to the field outside his palace. Here, he could follow cause/effect/cause/effect into perpetuity, tracing the paths of all possible decisions. Outcomes factored themselves before him, their branches unfurling exponentially into his hard drive as the number of unknown variables multiplied.  
  
He walked the circumference of the factor tree, studying it critically. To save John, Sherlock could either turn himself over to Moriarty – not ideal, considering Moriarty had already displayed a predilection for deceit – or he could steal John back. He’d tried that already and failed. If he wanted to succeed this time, he would need…he would need Mycroft.  
  
Emerging from within himself, Sherlock punched the number into his mobile with more force than strictly necessary. He hadn’t called Mycroft in years. He hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction, the insufferable snob. Only for John.  
  
Mycroft picked up after the first ring. “Sherlock. What a surprise. I don’t suppose you’ve lost something?” Sherlock almost hung up at the mocking insincerity in his brother’s voice. Almost.  
  
“I need everything you have on Moriarty’s New Orleans compound and your authorization for an A-class extraction team.” Sherlock spoke rapidly, his words tripping over each other as they stumbled out of his mouth. Anything to get this over with.  
  
“Why, dear brother, would I do that?”  
  
“I’ll defect.”  
  
The pause on the other end of the line spoke volumes. “I am aware of your…fondness…for John Watson. That is no excuse for idiocy. He would not thank you for betraying his cause.”  
  
Sherlock growled, his lips twisted into a vicious snarl. Time to put this in terms even Mycroft could understand. “I care nothing for the Monarchy, but I do care very much about getting what I want. If you do not assist me, I will pursue alternate means of procurement. If that means I get to wage war against you, brother, all the better.”  
  
Mycroft’s voice was frozen carbon dioxide personified, cold enough to burn. “Charming. You’ve become irrational over a boy, Sherlock. What would mummy say?”  
  
Sherlock knew exactly what mummy would have said. She came to him then, unbidden, as if Mycroft’s words had summoned her tall, rail-thin spectre from beyond the grave. _John Watson cannot help you. You have to think of yourself, dear heart. Think of the family. You have a brilliant mind, but it is all for naught without ambition. Caring is not an advantage_.  
  
Caring is not an advantage. Without a doubt, that was the Holmes family motto, to be written on each one of their headstones. “Make your choice, Mycroft. I’ll not waste another second on your nonsense.”  
  
“Fine. I will help you retrieve your lost boy. But you will do something for me in return. Whatever happens, you will put yourself at the disposal of the Monarchy for the duration of the war. It’s time you lived up to your obligations.”  
  
Control. That was the currency Mycroft dealt in, day in and day out. Sherlock hesitated. “Agreed.”  
  
“Then we have a deal. I’ll have files sent over immediately. When do you want to leave?”  
  
“As soon as possible. Tomorrow.”  
  
“I see. Please, proceed with caution.”  
  
“Bugger off.”  
  
Mycroft’s voice changed subtly at Sherlock’s terse response, taking on the long-suffering quality Sherlock detested. “Now, Sherlock. I only want what’s best for you. I like John well enough, but I will not hesitate to cut him loose if he turns out to be nothing more than your latest addiction-”  
  
Sherlock hung up, unwilling to listen further. Mycroft didn’t understand. Chasing John was not like chasing a high; there were no feelings of uncertainty, no adrenaline or euphoria. This was not obsession, emotional or otherwise.    
  
No, John was not an addiction. John was more of a family than any Holmes had ever been. John loved him.  
  
Just as he loved John.  
  
Sherlock stared at the heavy canvas wall of his tent, waiting for the panic that usually followed any outright acknowledgement of his feelings. None came. Why? Perhaps the natural satisfaction of going against Mycroft’s wishes had nullified his mind’s defense mechanisms. Perhaps he’d finally had enough time to grow accustomed to the idea.  
  
Or, perhaps, a part of him believed he would never see John again, therefore rendering the act of confession a moot exercise. Love was not nearly as frightening in the past tense.    
  
Sherlock took the white oak box from the room deep in his mind palace and shoved it into the safe he’d thought into the wall. He didn’t have time for this.  
  
He had to save John.  
  
***  
  
John sat on the floor of his room, self-swaddled in the plush rug he’d pulled from under the sitting area. He’d put his trousers on, but not the shirt – not covered in Moriarty as it was. That meant the bed covers were out too. And since John would rather put his hand through the wall than stay naked one more second, he had pulled up the rug.  
  
After Moriarty had left, John had slid from the bed deliberately and made his way to the crystal pitcher. Taking a mouthful of stale water, he’d swished vigorously, praying to the God he didn’t believe in that he wouldn’t be able to taste Moriarty on his tongue when he finished. He’d spit the water into the glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, disgusted and disappointed. Unsurprisingly, his fake God had not answered.  
  
John had hefted the nearly-full pitcher in his hands, savoring the angular heaviness of the crystal. He’d wanted nothing more than to chuck the pitcher with all his might into the canopy mirror, causing shards of glass to rain down on the bed and the floor, making the whole space untouchable.  
  
When he’d tried to carry the pitcher closer to the bed, his feet would not obey him. Only then did he remember Moriarty’s words, one of the first commands he’d issued: _I will not have you breaking my toys._ So John had put on his trousers instead and wrapped himself in the rug. He’d been sitting on the floor, back pressed to the wall opposite the door, ever since.  
  
Food was pushed through the slot and pulled back three times while John sat, thinking of nothing in particular and dozing occasionally. He knew he should think about what happened, try to process it, but his brain skittered so haphazardly he couldn’t bring the memory to the surface.  
  
Every so often, his searching would pull up a random memory. Like, for instance, when he remembered buying a birthday present for Sandy’s goddamn cat. That had made him giggle hysterically, laughing so hard he cried.  
  
When he could stand it no longer, John reached out for the Aura. The power cascaded into him, bringing with it a small measure of peace. He picked up a tendril of Aura gingerly, and began to manipulate it. Maybe he couldn’t use his power for anything real, but he could still use it to distract himself.  
  
With that in mind, John began a game he used to play when he was still at the Praxeum. He took the tendril of Aura he held and folded it in on itself, making it smaller and smaller. The point of the game was to see how small he could make the piece of Aura without losing control of it.

John had always liked this game because no one could beat him at it. He was competitive by nature, but as the weakest student at the Praxeum - by far the weakest, if he was being honest - John had always lost the trials of blunt force preferred by the other Adepts. In this game though, a scalpel was needed, not a sledgehammer. No other Adept could go as small as John could. None came close.    
  
He carefully folded his piece of Aura until it was the size of skin cell. That’s when he paused, handling the small parcel delicately. Cell-sized was the smallest John had ever gone. Shrugging mentally, he decided to try for another fold. Why the hell not? It wasn’t like he had anything else to do.  
  
Narrowing his consciousness, he focused his mind down to the point of needle. Carefully, he folded the parcel of Aura again. It worked. He hadn’t lost it. Holding his breath, he tried for another fold. It worked. Amazed at his progress, John kept shrinking the Aura down until the parcel was microscopic, atomic. He shrunk his consciousness down with it, barely keeping hold.  
  
Delighted, John smiled his first real smile in weeks. When had he got to be so good? Maybe it had something to do with all the time he’d spent with Sherlock. Constantly practicing Sherlock’s methods of observation and deduction must have given his mind a keener edge, allowing him to go smaller than he ever had before. It was a much needed reminder that not all unintended consequences were bad.  
  
Satisfied, John let the parcel of Aura go, the mental equivalent of blowing the seeds from a dandelion head. To John’s surprise, he did not immediately lose his connection with the parcel. Instead, he could feel the tiny piece of Aura float through his metaphysical hands and straight out of his body, slipping between the molecules of his skin effortlessly.  
  
John went stock still, taken aback. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Not while he had the Collar on. That was the name of the game. He could hold the Aura inside himself, but he couldn’t use it. He couldn’t direct it outward. It was impossible.  
  
Except, there it was. A piece of Aura so small he could not see it, really; he could only feel its tenuous connection with the rest of him.  
  
With the all the care of butterfly opening its wings for the first time, he moved the piece of Aura up the slightest bit. Nothing happened. He moved it again.  
  
John held his breath, afraid to move, afraid of the beat of his heart. Growing bolder, he moved the parcel up to his neck. Finally, he slipped the piece of Aura through the eye of the snake into his Collar.  
  
Over the next few hours, John meticulously folded piece after piece of Aura, floated them through his skin, and slipped them into his Collar. By the time he’d gathered enough Aura in his Collar to actually do something, he was blinking sweat out of his eyes. He’d shed the rug somewhere along the way, too intent upon his task to take notice of his bare chest.    
  
Hardly daring to hope, John charged the reservoir of power in his Collar. If he could introduce enough energy into the system, maybe he could alter the molecular structure of the gold just enough...  
  
Like a tree struck by lightning, John’s power burst outward, flooding the Collar with everything he held.  
  
John released his power, shocked and fearful. Had that just happened? What if Moriarty could feel him altering the Collar? Gripping his knees tightly, he breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. Maybe he should test that it hadn’t been a fluke before he completely lost the plot.  
  
Grabbing the Aura again, John turned his power on his own exhausted brain. Under his attention, his sluggish blood began to move more swiftly through his veins. Oxygen flow increased, clearing away the cobwebs that had accumulated since Moriarty left.  
  
He’d done it. He’d fooled the Collar.  
  
John climbed to his feet, cramped muscles burning in protest after so long in the same position. So little was known about the Collars on the British end. He had no way of knowing if Moriarty had already dispatched someone - or many someones - to bring him back into line. But this was not an opportunity he could afford to waste.  
  
He stumbled to the metal door and pressed himself against it, listening intently for footsteps in the corridor. At the same time, he eased a thread of Aura into the door’s locking mechanism. If Moriarty were truly as arrogant as he seemed, it was likely he’d put John in a room with a simple electricity-based lock. A man like Moriarty would never expect a man like John to defeat the Collar.  
  
Sure enough, opening the door was as easy as completing a small circuit. John poked his head around the door frame, scanning for possible combatants. There were none. He started to move out, but thought better of it at the last moment and retrieved his shirt instead. Careful not to let Moriarty’s dried mess touch any part of his face, John settled the soiled shirt onto his shoulders. Judging from what Mike Stamford had said, some Collared were allowed to walk the halls unsupervised. Fully clothed, he might be to pass as one of them. Maybe. Why had Moriarty made his Collar a fucking gold snake, the arrogant bastard?  
  
John strolled into the bright white corridor, making sure to trigger the door’s closing mechanism on his way out. He decided to go to his right, where the floor sloped upward gently. That had to be the way out.

He turned the first corner quickly, only to immediately collide with another person.  
  
“Excuse me-”  
  
“John?”  
  
He looked up sharply, deeply wary of being recognized so early in his escape. The man who’d spoken his name was tall and slender with wavy brown hair and light blue eyes. His craggy face was irregular to the extreme, the peaks of his cheekbones and nose giving way abruptly to hollow eyes and cheeks. Three other men were in the corridor, two coming closer to John and one peering around the opposite bend. Other than the craggy-faced man, all the men had silver Collars wrapped around their throats.  
  
“Excuse me, sir, urgent business-”  
  
The craggy-faced man cut him off. “You’re a horrendous liar. Hundley, if you would.”  
  
Expecting an attack, John dropped to the floor, already reaching with the Aura to put the tall man out of commission. Before he could complete the action, however, the tall man’s craggy face melted away. In his place stood Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock’s angular face was even sharper than usual, edges honed with focus, but his voice was rich with concern and puzzlement when he spoke. “John, are you well? How are you out of your cell?”  
  
“I’m...Sherlock, how did you...no, wait, I’m fine, I’m fine. I tricked the Collar. How are you here?”  
  
Sherlock’s eyes lit with wonder. “You tricked the Collar? You will explain that, as soon as you’re safe. Morris, we don’t need to cut it off him.” One of the other men, the blond one with the big arms, nodded and went to join the man still peering around the opposite bend. “Their Collars are fakes, obviously. No time to explain our infiltration strategy.” His eyes narrowed worriedly as he took in the disbelief on John’s face. “I’m sorry...I’m deeply sorry I didn’t find you sooner. Moriarty planted several false leads, and I failed to solve them in time. You paid the price for my incompetence. I hope you can forgive me.”  
  
“This isn’t your fault, Sherlock, it’s Moriarty’s. I, for one, have never been happier to see another person in my life.” He touched Sherlock’s hand with his, but briefly. This wasn’t the time or the place. “But we can’t talk about this now. We need to move. Is this your whole team?”  
  
“Two more have secured our exit.”  
  
“Let’s go.”  
  
To the team’s credit, they nearly made it out of the complex unnoticed. Unfortunately, as these operations so often were, their carefully laid plans were shot to hell by a completely unforeseeable twist of fate. Only one more door separated John from the outside world when Victor Trevor turned into the hall.  
  
John’s blood flash froze as Victor’s eyes met his. Of course he was here. After the Cyrus Hatch affair, Sherlock had tracked him to Moriarty’s command center in France. He must have followed Moriarty to New Orleans in the intervening months. And worse, he knew that John was not supposed to be walking the halls.  
  
Before anyone could react, Victor pulled the alarm on the wall next to him. A high pitched blaring began to reverberate through the halls, accompanied by flashing, wall-mounted lights. The din was deafening.  
  
Forgetting the Aura entirely, John tackled Victor to the ground, getting his elbow around the goateed man’s neck and squeezing. Victor wriggled beneath him, gasping and struggling to get the leverage necessary to throw John off. It was to no avail; John used his hold on Victor to slam his head into the concrete floor.  
  
At that point, one of Sherlock’s team - Morris? - twisted his hand in their direction. Victor’s neck twisted with it, snapping as easily as a twig in the forest.  
  
John blinked down at Victor’s corpse, unable to garner any sympathy for the man. What goes around, comes around. Pressing his lips together, John took Morris’s proffered hand and got to his feet. The rest of the team, including Sherlock, was already at the door.  
  
John started his rush towards the door too, aware that Moriarty’s troops were on their way. He must have miscalculated the amount of time it would take the troops to find the cause of the disturbance, however, because John made it a total a five steps before a blinding pain in his left shoulder sent him sprawling.  
  
Dazed, John barely registered Morris above him, blocking the bullets whizzing down the corridor as he dragged John out of the complex into a car park. The air outside was hot and humid, settling over John like a wet blanket. The thick air also kept the petrol fumes from the hundred or so lorries in the car park from escaping into the atmosphere. Already light headed, John had to concentrate to keep from vomiting.  
  
Then the craggy-faced Sherlock was above him, touching his face and helping to load him into a waiting truck. The team’s medical Adept jumped on board after him, laying his hands on John, driving the pain away.  
  
The truck drove a short distance. John, still fighting shock, was transferred to an unmarked van, then, later, onto a small boat. Sherlock was with him the entire time. Finally, when they were far enough away to be out of immediate danger, the medical Adept put him under.  
  
When John woke up, hours later, he was in yet another hospital bed. For an awful moment, he believed he was back in Moriarty’s infirmary and Mike Stamford would come through any second. He didn’t relax until he saw Sherlock sprawled in a chair by the window, glaring into the shadows by the door.  
  
The escape had been real. His felt his neck with his right hand, careful of his injured shoulder: no Collar. Oh, thank God, there was no Collar. John huffed a breath that was half laugh, half sob.  
  
“You’re awake.” Crazy déjà vu overtook John again. He really needed to stop waking up in hospital beds. They were starting to blend together. “Can you hear me, John?”  
  
The familiar voice was coming from the shadows, right where Sherlock was glaring. Mycroft took a step forward, the low hospital light casting shadows across his round face. He held his umbrella in one hand, the gold snake Collar in the other.  
  
John looked at Sherlock, ignoring Mycroft completely. Sherlock gave a Mycroft a smug look. “You’re going to be fine, John. You were shot in the shoulder while exiting the complex, but our medical Adept stabilized you en route to Columbia. Your shoulder took significant damage, most of which was repaired, but we will not know the full impact the injury until you’ve healed fully. It’s left quite an interesting scar.”  
  
“Right.” John turned to Mycroft. “And why are you here?”  
  
Mycroft raised one eyebrow archly and lifted the Collar. “Sherlock tells me you circumvented the empathic control of the Collar. I would love to know how. Do you realize what the implications would be if we found a way to free Moriarty’s Collared?”  
  
Oh. That made sense. “I slipped microscopic pieces of Aura through the Collar’s net and into the Collar. When I’d gathered enough, I used it to change the molecular composition of the Collar, just slightly. That was enough, I guess, because the Collar didn’t work after that.”  
  
Mycroft stared at him blankly. “I’m not sure I know what you mean. Microscopic pieces of Aura?”  
  
“I can’t explain it. I have to show you.”  
  
Mycroft pursed his lips, unsatisfied. “If you must. We have several ordinary Collars in our possession. Would you mind if we fitted you with one temporarily to see how your process works? It would be minimally invasive, you have my word.”  
  
Mouth open, John couldn’t think of a reply. There was absolutely no way he would ever voluntarily put one of those things around his neck. Absolutely not.  
  
Sherlock seemed to pick up on John’s thoughts, because he answered for him, voice scathing. “Have you finally lost what little remains of your mind? He’ll show you however he wants, if he wants to. Now take that thing out of our sight.”  
  
“Sherlock-”  
  
John cut Mycroft off, injecting more weariness into his voice than was strictly necessary. “Please, I’m not feeling up to it now anyway. Come back tomorrow. I know how important this is, I promise I’ll help in any way I can.”  
  
Mycroft eyed them both dubiously, obviously unconvinced. He stepped toward the door reluctantly. “Tomorrow. First thing. And, John? Welcome back.”  
  
Sherlock waited until Mycroft disappeared before he turned back to John. “You’re being reassigned to London. Due to injury.”  
  
“Is that right?” Wincing, John probed his shoulder with Aura. “And where will you be, strategic consultant?”  
  
“London.” John continued his examination of his shoulder, unsurprised. Sherlock continued. “I had to make a deal with my brother the extortionist before he would agree to authorize your extraction. I’m joining London central command.”  
  
“You agreed to work for Mycroft? You didn’t have to do that.”  
  
“Yes, I did.”  
  
Forgetting his shoulder for the time being, John frowned at Sherlock. Sherlock was deadly serious. He leaned toward John, visible preparing himself to say something.  
  
“Moriarty is still out there, John, and I am the only one who can stop him. What he did to you will not be tolerated.” He stopped to clear his throat, trying to erase the tremor from his voice. “I’ve been thinking about what you said to me. I’ve been thinking about everything. I’m ready.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
John licked his lips, unsure if he’d heard right. “What?”

“I love you. I want you.”

Still skeptical, John tried again. “Are you sure? Don’t say it just because you feel guilty or something.”      
  
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but fondly. “Yes, you’ve caught me out. I don’t mean it. I just don’t feel like looking for another flatmate. I’m a hard man to live with, John.”

“Are you seriously going to mock me? Now?”

“Yes.”

John laughed then, a real laugh straight from his belly. “Oh, I love you, too, you posh git.”

Sherlock smiled. “I knew you’d say that.”

“Right then.” John sighed, content. With Sherlock and the breakthrough with the Collars…maybe things were going to be alright. “I have to talk to Mycroft tomorrow. But after that, let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all of you who commented that one more chapter did not seem like enough to finish the story, you were right. This was only the first half of the story. Surprise. I will be starting the second half, which will be more from other character's POVs, in the next couple of weeks. 
> 
> And because writing is a social activity best done with friends, I've picked up a beta reader - that's you MissJade. 
> 
> See you soon!


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